Newhall Land and Farming Company
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| Private | |
| Industry | Real estate |
| Founded | 1883 |
| Founder | Newhall family |
| Headquarters | Valencia, California, USA |
| Website | http://www.valencia.com/ |
The Newhall Land and Farming Company is a land management company based in Valencia, California, United States. The company is responsible for the master community planning of Valencia, as well as the management of farm land elsewhere in the state.
The company was incorporated on July 1, 1883, by the five sons of Henry Newhall (William, Edwin, Henry, Walter, and George), a businessman who had purchased a number of former Mexican land grants. Newhall had died the previous year and had instructed his sons not to sell the land. The company initially had 143,000 acres (579 km²) of land, ranging from Monterey to Los Angeles counties. Unfortunately, the income generated by ranching was not enough to support the families of all five sons in the comfortable lifestyle they had grown up with, and they began to sell off portions of their vast holdings in order to generate income.
Successive land sales allowed the Newhalls to maintain their lifestyle, but William (who was known by his middle name Mayo), a graduate of Yale University, understood that they needed a better way to generate income. After a few more land sales, Mayo took the income and reinvested it into the land by developing agriculture. The land around their headquarters, the former Rancho San Francisco, was cleared for citrus trees, and lima beans were planted in the Sacramento Valley. The income from these crops allowed the company to grow in the 1920s. Additionally, one more land sale, a 38,000 acre (150 km²) parcel in 1922 to William Randolph Hearst for $1 million (to be paid in installments over ten years) helped fill the company's coffers.
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