osedale Ranch can trace its roots back to the late 1880s when James B. Haggin and his brother-in-law Lloyd Tevis, Sr., created the Kern County Land Company. Accumulating more than 400,000 acres, the pair divided their holdings into 14 ranches, including a spread south of 7th Standard Road that they named Rosedale Ranch.

In 1891, in an effort to lure English emigrants to the property, the KCLC created the Rosedale Colony. They divided 12,000 acres of the ranch into 20-acre parcels and planted the now-majestic "Crossing Palms" at the site of the colony's town center. They hired an Englishman, real estate agent S.W. Fergusson, to promote the project to his countrymen and built him an elaborate home on the property. Advertising the virtues of the "rich alluvial valley land" and the opportunity to produce "all fruits possible to both the temperate and semitropic zones," the KCLC lured a number of English immigrants to the property. But their dreams of becoming wealthy planters were dashed by the harsh reality of clearing and planting the barren soil in the face of floods, droughts and lack of experience. This failed attempt was followed by an equally unsuccessful effort to create yet another new colony, called Rosedale, just north of the original site.

Falling well short of their ultimate goal to persuade 20,000 emigrant farmers and their families to acquire 20-acre farms, the KCLC eventually abandoned their strategy, replaced Fergusson with Henry A. Jastro, and refocused its efforts to sell land only to large "responsible" buyers.

In the 1950s, the KCLC began to grant leases to local farmers, including Rosedale Ranch, LP, partner Keith Gardiner's father, to put Rosedale Ranch—which was then sagebrush and desert—back into agricultural production. The Gardiners farmed a portion of the property until the late 1960s when KCLC was sold to Tenneco West and the lease terms changed.

When Prudential Insurance, which had acquired a large part of the original ranch property, put its portion up for sale in the 1990s, Keith Gardiner and his brother-in-law, Jeff Townsend, decided to purchase it. Since the purchase, Gardiner has cultivated the property with almonds and other diversified crops.

Today, with growth pushing ever closer to the property, Gardiner and Townsend believe the time to "colonize" Rosedale Ranch is finally here. More than 100 years after the Crossing Palms were first planted to guide settlers to the property, they will become the hallmark of a vibrant new community.