The ol’ 650,000-gallon custom “poolpond”

Los Robles Ranch is a private 720-acre estate built in 2006 near Santa Ysabel, a small rural community situated between Ramona and Julian.

The main residence includes 3542 square feet of indoor living space, including four bedrooms and two offices. The home was “styled after the architecture of the estancias of Argentina,” say listing materials, and it “exudes rustic sophistication.”

Luxury appointments include vaulted open-beam ceilings, a floor-to-ceiling arched stone fireplace in the living room, kitchen with chef-quality appliances and a wraparound granite island, and rich wood paneling in the office/study.

Indoor living space

Two ponds ready to fish

For hours of riding pleasure

The ranch, however, is designed with outdoor living in mind. There’s a second covered outdoor kitchen with grill, fireplace, and mounted television adjacent to the oversized dual garage. The backyard features a spa, fire pit, fountain, and putting green.

On a grassy stretch of property below the house is the pool — except it’s almost too large to refer to as a pool. Listing materials refer to it as a 650,000-gallon “custom poolpond with beach access, dock, waterfall, and pool house.”

For outdoorsmen, the property also boasts two natural ponds, stocked and ready to fish, in addition to a solar-powered skeet-shooting range.

A 6800-square-foot barn houses 19 stalls, an office, bathroom, tack room, wash bay and foaling stall. Other equestrian features include an “outdoor dressage riding arena, hot walker, 6-stall mare motel, and equipment barn.” Immediately adjacent to the property, “endless countryside trails provide hours of riding pleasure.”

Appealing to gardeners

Appealing to gardeners, the ranch includes two greenhouses in addition to plenty of space to tend outdoor crops. Fifteen cows roam the range and are referred to as groundskeepers to “keep the property well maintained.”

Paintball field

The go-cart barn

Even more outdoor amusements: a shaded “park” with trees to climb and children’s play structures, a paintball field on rolling hillsides with hay-bale bunkers and obstacles (paintball gear and guns included), and a “massive” paved go-kart racetrack with separate go-kart barn and four karts.

In addition to the main residence, two guest houses, two more caretakers’ houses, and the pool house add 6000 square feet of living space to the property.

Public records show the property is being sold by David Batchelder, cofounder of Relational Advisors LLC, a firm that’s “a nationally recognized source of expertise for mergers, acquisitions, private financings, and shareholder matters,” according to his bio on the company’s site.

A July 2014 Wall Street Journal article called Batchelder and Relational co-founder Ralph Whitworth “pioneers of activist investing, in which firms buy up shares and press companies for strategic or other changes.”

Batchelder later told the Journal that he purchased Los Robles Ranch as raw land for $5 million in 2005, setting out to build “a family fun compound.” The swimming pool, he says, was converted from an existing cow pond.

The property was listed for sale in late May with an asking price of $17,500,000, which remains unchanged.