Press & Media

Set across 2.4 acres, the well-appointed home and guesthouse overlook the second fairway of the celebrated course, with the Pacific Ocean beyond.

Sacramento, Calif., businessman Brian Kraft visited Africa for the first time in the 1980s, he said, but his heart never left. He proposed to his now-wife, Bernadette Kraft, in a hot-air balloon above Serengeti National Park. The couple got married in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1988. And two decades ago, after taking their three sons to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Brian started wondering how he could bring some of the African experience closer to home. “Can I re-create a mini Africa that’s a short distance away from our house?” he recalled thinking.

This Northern California spread, dubbed Oak Hill Preserve, comes with a professionally managed collection of African Watusi cattle, East African plains zebras, and 75-year-old sulcata tortoises. It was conceived almost two decades ago by the owners, Brian and Bernadette Kraft, who have a deep love of African culture and wildlife. Indeed, the couple became engaged in a hot air balloon soaring above the Serengeti, and they later married in Africa. Inspired by their connections to the continent, they created the preserve as their own sanctuary in Ione, a small, historic Gold Rush town of less than 6,000 people just outside Sacramento.

I HOPE it sells quickly - and never," said Millie Campbell of the home at 104 Yankee Point she and her husband, Tom Campbell, have lived in for decades.