John Harris, longtime Pacific Legal Foundation trustee and former board chair, passed away this summer at the age of 81. This article is reprinted here from PLF’s quarterly magazine Sword&Scales.
Midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, off I-5 on the Western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, sits Harris Farms and Harris Ranch—a spread that’s home to 100,000 cattle; cropland for tomatoes, garlic, lemons, oranges, almonds, pistachios, and wine grapes; a horse training facility; and a resort with farm-to-table cuisine.
This spread is legendary because of the man who made it what it is: John Harris, California farmer, entrepreneur, horse-racing mogul, and longtime Pacific Legal Foundation trustee and former Board chair.
John passed away in July at the age of 81. He was an icon of the West and an inspiration: We were lucky to know and work with him. I will miss John. I had the good fortune of spending time with him all over the San Joaquin Valley. I can still taste the fresh-squeezed orange juice from a tree planted next door to the Harris Ranch Inn. It’s one of the many memories I’ll cherish, not to mention those exhibiting his keen wit and sense of humor.
As Jeffrey Warren, a friend and fellow PLF trustee put it, “A true California legend has left us.”
John’s father started Harris Ranch in 1937 on 320 acres of desert that had never before been farmed. John was born six years later. He earned a degree in agricultural production at UC-Davis and took over his family’s agribusiness when his father died in 1981. Under John’s leadership, the business boomed. At one point he was operating the biggest farm west of the Mississippi. He also bred champion Thoroughbred racehorses: California Chrome, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, came from John’s stables. (“The moment California Chrome sprinted over the finish line, tears streamed down Harris’ face,” The Los Angeles Times reported.)
At PLF we often talk about the infinite capacity of human beings to expand the world’s potential—to improve lives through hard work and sheer imagination. That’s what John Harris did. Where there was once barren desert is now a farm and ranch that feed countless people. With his life, John made other lives better.
“John Harris was an exemplary citizen and even greater friend,” Jeffrey Warren says. “I idolized him.”
Jeffrey and his wife Cindy often travelled with John—to rodeos in Las Vegas and to the Kentucky Derby, where John “was feted as racing royalty,” Jeffrey remembers.
You wouldn’t know, meeting John for the first time, that he’d built an empire. Jeffrey says:
Dressed mostly in Levis and cowboy boots (or a swimsuit when we body surfed at Del Mar), he may have been the most humble, modest man I have ever met. He had no airs. He had a plethora of admiring friends. He treated all of his employees with kindness and dignity.
John cared about people he would never meet—which motivated his philanthropy and advocacy.
“He cared about the State of California and our constitutional republic,” Jeffrey says. “He was always thinking—always asking questions. His intellectual curiosity was endless.”
Carol Liebau, another fellow PLF trustee, knew John as a family friend for years before they worked on the PLF board together.
“John Harris was a great patriot,” Carol says. “He was a great businessman. And he was a great horseman. He cared about his country, he cared about his state, and he cared about the people who worked for him. And he left everything he touched a little better.”
Natasha Hunt has been a neighbor of John’s (and fellow cattle rancher) for 25 years. She remembers when John visited her ranch. “He was genuinely interested, as a neighbor, to see what we were doing with our cattle on the landscape,” she says, remembering:
We drove through the ranch and talked about grazing management strategies, water infrastructure, the use of prescribed fire, and much more. He was always a great source of knowledge and history.
John even knew descendants from the family who built Natasha’s ranch. He put her in touch with them, which was “very much appreciated.”
The entire community, Natasha says, relied on John’s commercial farming ventures—like the feedlot that helped everyone in the area sell cattle, and the Harris Wolf Almond plants that helped Natasha’s ranch get through a bad drought year, when there was a shortage of forage in the pastures.
They also relied on his advice. It was at the Harris Ranch Inn, during a meeting of the California Cattlemen’s Association, that Natasha first heard about Pacific Legal Foundation. She wanted to direct support from her mother’s foundation to a good cause. She asked John for his opinion.
“He said the first thing I needed to look into and support was PLF,” Natasha says.
Natasha is now honoring John’s legacy with her mother’s foundation: The Judith McBean Foundation is offering a matching grant of up to $100,000 for any first-time donors to PLF, which will go to support our new Environment and Natural Resources practice group.
We’re immensely grateful to the Foundation for honoring John’s memory with us.
Bob Connors, chairman of PLF’s board of trustees, recalls that when he first joined the board in 2011,
John welcomed me with a warm note encouraging my active commitment to PLF’s mission to preserve the rights and freedoms future generations depend on. His example and quiet encouragement left a lasting mark on PLF and on me personally. I remain grateful for his support and the meaningful impact he had on our shared cause.
Next year America will celebrate its 250th birthday. John Harris’s life stretched over nearly a third of our country’s entire existence—and he spent that time transforming land and lives for the better, unlocking opportunities made possible by freedom. He cared deeply about protecting that freedom for future generations, and we’re proud to continue that work in his name.
As Jeffrey puts it, “We were blessed to have been in his orbit.”
If you know someone who is unfamiliar with PLF but whom you think would be interested in taking advantage of The Judith McBean Foundation’s generous $100,000 matching gift, please contact PLF’s vice president for development, Roger Pattison, at 202-815-0806 or .