Zaca Station sat in the oak hills outside Los Olivos on Chamberlin ranch land. Ed Guajardo ran it as a private track with a small gate list. For about fifteen years it was one of the best riding spots in the country. Rich loam, rolling jumps, trees in the bowls. The kind of place people still talk about years after the gate closed.
I never rode it. That’s the part that sticks. By the time I knew what it was, the pressure was already on. In 2018 local authorities pushed it shut. The hills are still there. The lines are not.
The balance was always tight. A small gate list kept it manageable and quiet enough to last. Once it grew and more people showed up, it became harder to ignore. Neighbors and the county had something to point at. The same thing that made it special—the private access, the prep, the dirt—also made it a target when the list got longer and the traffic more visible. Commercial scale without the protections of a commercial operation is a hard spot to hold.
Zaca is one of the reasons this page exists. A lot of the listings I post are smaller tracks on private land. The goal is simple: keep them rideable without turning into the next place that gets regulated out of existence. Not every track needs a gate list of hundreds. Some just need enough space, the right dirt, and neighbors who aren’t looking for a reason.
While its beneficial for most tracks to fly under the radar, Zaca was never destined for that. It garnered media and the top riders at the time as guests. Zaca was never going to not be legendary.