Popular Hawaii Filming Location Dillingham Ranch Sold

Dillingham Ranch, one of Hawaii's most popular filming locations, is officially off the market! Initially listed in October 2020 for $45 million, the massive site, which comprises an 18.8-acre oceanfront polo field (home to the Hawaii Polo Club) and a 2,721-acre working cattle ranch, was just snapped up in early March for $36.5 million. Though selling agent Neal Norman of Hawai’i Life declined to disclose information regarding the buyer, Yahoo! News recently reported that the property was sold to Peter J. Nolan, chairman of the Hermosa Beach-based Nolan Captial, Inc. investment firm, who boasts an extensive background in agriculture.

Nestled in the bluffs of Waialua on Oahu's North Shore, the insanely idyllic locale "stretches from the oceanfront at Kai’ahulu Beach to the ridgeline of the Waianae Mountain range, bordering the Mokulē‘ia Forest Reserve" and "includes over 1,125 linear feet of ocean frontage and upland views of Ka’ena Point to the world-famous big wave surfing beaches," as the listing detailed.

Jointly repped by Matt Beall, principal broker with Hawai’i Life, Matt Davis, director with Cushman & Wakefield in Southern California, and Anthony Provenzano, senior vice president of Hawaii's local Cushman & Wakefield agency ChaneyBrooks, the sale marked "the largest contiguous land offering on Oahu" and was "among the largest contiguous agricultural land offerings in the entire state."

While marketed as a possible development opportunity, with the seller receiving tentative approval to transform the expansive acreage into a 70-lot agricultural subdivision, Nolan revealed that he currently has no such intentions and is instead planning to maintain operating Dillingham as a working ranch. Calling it an "irreplaceable tract of land," he recently told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, "It's not a piece of property that was bought with an eye toward development, at least not for the foreseeable future. I am just a long-term investor, and I’ve done quite a bit in agriculture. So what's gone on with Dillingham Ranch for the past 20 years is going to continue. Really, just the plan is to fix what's there. The past owners, their primary business wasn't the business of the ranch. My primary business is the business of the ranch, and there's quite a bit of deferred maintenance." The announcement was music to the ears of locals, who cherish the North Shore's vast and historic legacy.

According to a Historic Resources Evaluation, the sprawling property started life in the 1880s as a rice farm originally established by a Portuguese transplant named Gaspar Silva. In 1897, the verdant acreage was purchased by its namesake, Oahu Railway & Land Company founder Benjamin Franklin Dillingham, who initially dubbed his new homestead "Mokuleia Ranch." At the time, it consisted of 12 artesian wells utilized for rice manufacturing and a small residence, which remains intact today and is currently known as the "Dollhouse."

Benjamin's eldest son, Walter Francis Dillingham, began managing the land in the early 1900s, operating it as a family estate and summer getaway. Born in 1875 and later deemed "Hawaii's greatest builder," Walter was one of the leading developers of the city of Honolulu, responsible for "the dredging of the Ala Wai Canal, construction of Ala Moana Park and Ala Moana Center, the dredging of Pearl Harbor as a naval base and the building of Honolulu Airport on reclaimed land," as the Honolulu Star-Bulletin chronicled in a 1999 feature.

To accommodate the growing family, Walter and his siblings, Harold and Marion, commissioned a new, larger 3,000-square-foot dwelling to be built on the premises in 1913. Known as both the "Big House" and "Dillingham Lodge," the residence was crafted in the Hawaiian country style, complete with a main house and three additional wings consisting of eight bedrooms, a formal dining room with a stonewall fireplace, a great room, hardwood flooring, beamed ceilings, French doors and a 700-square-foot professional-grade kitchen.

The picturesque grounds were also built up to include polo fields, a 700-head cattle ranch, a commercial palm tree nursery, miles of trails, the largest coconut grove in all of Hawaii, a massive pond, a multitude of rolling lawns, numerous event spaces and an equestrian center with boarding and training facilities.

Per the Historic Resources Evaluation, the property served as a "splendid country estate" for the Dillinghams and the hub of their "leisure time together" throughout their eight decades of ownership. The family also regularly entertained on the premises, hosting such luminaries as U.S. Army General George S. Patton, "Oklahoma's Favorite Son" Will Rogers and actress Eva Gabor at different points in time. Playwright Noël Coward is even said to have penned "A Room with a View" on the lodge's lanai, and King Charles III (the then Prince of Wales) played polo on the beachfront fields. Walter's son Benjamin Franklin II later recounted to the Star-Bulletin, "My father sat me on the prince's knee and made me sing ‘Three Blind Mice’ in Hawaiian. We all knew the words." In more recent years, Cream drummer Ginger Baker and supermodel Heidi Klum are each known to have spent time at the ranch.

Today, the vast and varied land is mainly utilized for cattle farming and as a special events venue, serving as one of the island's most popular and versatile wedding locations.

Dillingham Ranch is also, of course, an extremely popular filming site, popping up as everything from a naval base to a Vietnamese military palace to a treatment center in such productions as the 1965 Otto Preminger-directed war drama "In Harm's Way," the original 1980s television series "Magnum, P.I." and CBS’ 2010 "Hawaii Five-0" reboot, respectively. Perhaps most famously, the property appeared in several different iterations throughout the six-season run of the ABC mega-hit "Lost," portraying such spots as the Iowa home of Wayne Janssen (James Horan) that Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) blows up in season two, the Australian farm belonging to Ray Mullen (Nick Tate) where Kate later takes refuge, and the palm tree grove where the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors are chased by a polar bear in part two of the pilot.

While DIRT covered the ranch's extensive filming history in an October 2020 post on the location back when it was first listed for sale, its onscreen use did not wane during its time on the market (as copiously chronicled by Reel News Hawaii) and it now boasts several additional credits to its name.

"NCIS: Hawaii" is a frequent visitor to Dillingham Ranch, first descending upon the property for a police chase sequence in season two's "Blind Curves." For the segment, the site was renamed "Iroquois Ranch," as seen above.

The production headed there again later that season for the episode titled "Shields Up," in which Dillingham Lodge masked as the monastery where Jane Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) and Jesse Boone (Noah Mills) interrogated Marine-sergeant-turned-monk Brother Ellis Kane (Wes Chatham).

Rick Wright (Zachary Knighton) and Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks) are taken hostage there in the season five episode of CBS’ "Magnum P.I." reboot titled "Number One with a Bullet." And Apple TV+'s upcoming series "Chief of War," starring Jason Momoa, also recently did some filming on the premises.

Here's hoping Dillingham Ranch's prolific cinematic usage endures under its new steward, with the property's gorgeous vistas continuing to grace our screens for generations to come. For now, at least, Nolan seems keen on the idea. As he expressed to the Star-Advertiser, the ranch is "very popular with the film industry. There's been a lot of major production that is taking place on the island, and hopefully there’ll be more in the future." Cheers to that!

Get the latest scoop directly in your inbox.