Sumner Hill, California
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Sumner Hill is an
unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
in
Madera County Madera County (), officially the County of Madera, is a county at the geographic center of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 156,255. The county seat is Madera. Madera County comprises the Madera, CA Metr ...
,
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. Lying at an elevation of 535 feet (163 m), it is miles north of Woodland Park in Fresno. It was created in 1985 as a 49-lot subdivision on a bluff on the eastern section of Peck Ranch, on the Madera County side of the San Joaquin River. The gated community developed a reputation for its high-priced homes. In the 1990s, the entire 15,000-acre area south of Little Table Mountain and east of Highways 41 and 45, including Sumner Hill, started being called "Rio Mesa". In a six-year legal battle, the Sumner Hill Homeowners' Association fought to protect the subdivision's exclusive access to the San Joaquin River via Killkelly Road, with a Fresno appellate court affirming in 2012 that the statute of limitations had expired for Rio Mesa developers to claim public access. As of 2012, Sumner Hill remained the only significant residential development in the Rio Mesa area. In a subsequent lawsuit, the Rio Mesa developers won a $25 million judgment against a national title insurance company for failing to defend their access to the river through Sumner Hill.


Background

In 1983, the
County of Madera Madera County (), officially the County of Madera, is a county at the geographic center of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 156,255. The county seat is Madera. Madera County comprises the Madera, CA Met ...
approved the creation of Sumner Hill as a residential subdivision, on the condition that a security gate and perimeter fence were installed. This was to minimize the need for local law enforcement to travel to the community's remote location. The 670-acre development opened in 1985. The 49 lots ranged in size from to six acres. Early Sumner Hill residents included members of the Peck family, who were fourth-generation farmers in
San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven c ...
. Street names within the subdivision were personally selected by Carolyn Peck, owner of Peck Ranch, and included names like Rose of Trailee Place, Killarney Drive, and Bonny-Kerry Lane. On one side, the bluff overlooks
Friant Dam Friant Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the San Joaquin River in central California in the United States, on the boundary of Fresno and Madera Counties. It was built between 1937 and 1942 as part of a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) water pr ...
, Lost Lake, the San Joaquin River, and the
Sierra foothills The Sierra Foothills AVA (established in 1987) is an American Viticultural Area in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in the U.S. state of California in the United States. Wine grapes were introduced to the area in the nineteenth century during the ...
. On another side, it offers a view of Madera and Fresno counties toward
Clovis Clovis may refer to: People * Clovis (given name), the early medieval (Frankish) form of the name Louis ** Clovis I (c. 466 – 511), the first king of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler ** Clovis II (c. 634 – c. 657), ...
and the Fresno skyline. The two-lane road leading to Sumner Hill passes vineyards and pastures, and citrus orchards are also visible in the surrounding area. Wildlife in the area included deer and geese, as well as skunks, raccoons, and coyotes. By 1992, Sumner Hill was referred to as "Pill Hill" because so many doctors had moved there from Fresno. In 2007, ''
The Fresno Bee ''The Fresno Bee'' is a daily newspaper serving Fresno, California, and surrounding counties in that U.S. state's central San Joaquin Valley. It is owned by The McClatchy Company and ranks fourth in circulation among the company's newspapers. I ...
'' described the community as having some of the most elegant homes in the Fresno area. Sumner Hill relies on the San Joaquin River as its main water source.


Access road to river

The final subdivision maps recorded in 1984 and 1985 showed Killkelly Road, a dirt road traversing the tract to provide homeowners with unrestricted access to the San Joaquin River. In 1993, Madera County vacated its interest in Killkelly Road, deeming it unnecessary for public use, and vacated its interest in all other roads in the Sumner Hill subdivision in 1994. The rights were conveyed to the Sumner Hill Homeowners Association.


Lawsuits

In the mid-1990s, Madera County officials started planning a new city called Rio Mesa, including Sumner Hill, as it sought to convince
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
officials to locate its new campus in the area – ultimately losing out to
Merced Merced (; Spanish for "Mercy") is a city in, and the county seat of, Merced County, California, United States, in the San Joaquin Valley. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 86,333, up from 78,958 in 2010. Incorporated on April 1 ...
. Around 2004, the McCaffrey Group and two partners acquired 1,600 acres of the Peck Ranch for a proposed new development of 5,200 homes. Sumner Hill residents filed a lawsuit in 2006, after the developers tried to prevent them from accessing the San Joaquin river bottom by installing gates and hiring security guards, and invited the general public to enter their subdivision. In 2008, the
Madera County Superior Court The Superior Court of California, County of Madera, also known as the Madera County Superior Court or Madera Superior Court, is the branch of the California superior court with jurisdiction over Madera County. History Madera County was partitio ...
ruled that Sumner Hill was a "private, gated subdivision" with exclusive access to the river and needed to be maintained as such, precluding new developers from running trails and other access routes through that tract. In 2009, a jury awarded the homeowners $3.2 million in punitive damages. In 2012, the Fresno 5th District Court of Appeal upheld the jury's award for
slander of title In law, slander of title is normally a claim involving real estate in which one entity publishes a false statement that disparages or clouds another entity's title to property, causing a financial loss. Alternatively, it is casting aspersion on som ...
and other claims, and affirmed the 2008 decision on the basis that the Rio Mesa developers had filed their claim of public access under the Subdivision Map Act well after the statute of limitations had expired. However, the court also noted that the Constitution of California had protected public access to navigable waters since 1879, ruling in favor of the Rio Mesa developers on this point, but declined to decide what it deemed as "a basic uncertainty in the law of navigability." The case ''Sumner Hill Homeowners' Association, Inc. v. Rio Mesa Holdings, LLC'' has also been cited for affirming that "an interest as small (or large) as a simple right-of-way easement can serve as a basis for a slander of title suit. In 2016, the Rio Mesa developers won a $25 million judgment against Fidelity National Title Insurance for its failure to defend the developers' access to the river through Sumner Hill. Lawyers for the developers claimed that the verdict was a warning to title companies across the country to be more careful, particularly with regard to California insurance law.


References

Unincorporated communities in California Unincorporated communities in Madera County, California {{authority control