The half-century-long saga of Rio Bravo Country Club — once a favored retreat for elites — has taken yet another, seemingly darker, turn.

The country club, situated on the doorstep of the southern Sierra Nevada next to the banks of the Kern River, was purchased in late 2023 by Jeremy and Kim Willer, a married Bakersfield couple who initially promised big improvements on the property’s massive, and long-neglected, footprint. 

The Willers’ Rio Bravo dream, however, gradually turned into a drama-fueled nightmare. And in January, the club closed its doors in the weeks following the couple’s drawn-out public feud, which culminated in a barrage of allegations and a late-December divorce filing.

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Rio Bravo has made headlines since its inception in the mid-1970s, when it was designed as a high-end retreat just 11 miles northeast of downtown Bakersfield. Due to its striking topography, remote feel and ahead-of-its-time, eco-friendly golf course design from notable architect Robert Muir Graves, the club instantly seemed like a found paradise unlike any other in California. 

A view from hole 11 at the Rio Bravo Country Club near Bakersfield, Calif. 

But this Central Valley Eden didn’t last long before troubled times befell it, starting with its socialite founder declaring bankruptcy. And the cursed narrative seemed to do nothing but follow a series of failed owners and ownership groups starting in the mid-1980s. 

Don't let Google decide who you trust.

Most recently, the property was listed for sale for $4.9 million in 2022. The low price included the golf course, the clubhouse and a parcel zoned for 22 developable lots. “The truth is if you bought it for the acreage alone, it’s — no pun intended — it’s dirt cheap,” John Willingham, the property’s listing agent, told SFGATE in July 2022. “You can’t buy subdivision land anywhere near that price.”

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There was also a notable history attached to the property for anyone who might want to purchase Rio Bravo, which has the deepest of California roots that can be traced back over a century to land baron Henry Miller. Miller, at the time of his death in 1916, had amassed more than 800,000 acres of land in this state alone. 

Agriculture in the Central Valley. This canal is part of the California Aqueduct, a system of canals, tunnels and pipelines that conveys water collected from the Sierra Nevada and valleys of Northern and Central California to Southern California.

Water travels within the Los Angeles Aqueduct from Northern California to the city of Los Angeles.

Miller’s descendants today include writer Nellie Bowles (whose spouse is Bari Weiss) and Tucker Carlson. But it was Miller’s great-grandson, George Nickel Jr., who made Rio Bravo — and a whole lot more — happen. 

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Nickel was raised in the Bay Area and attended UC Berkeley in the mid-1930s. By the mid-1960s, he, with help of Gov. Pat Brown, had helped plan the creation of the California Aqueduct, a 444-mile engineering marvel that built modern California by moving water from the Sierra Nevada and irrigating the Central Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. It triggered rapid agricultural and population growth across the state. 

Nickel transformed Rio Bravo into his own personal playground, a place where he could host notable friends in relative privacy and enjoy the spoils of his success. San Francisco society columnist Albert Morch described the high society hangout in a San Francisco Examiner story from April 13, 1976, where he called Nickel “Rio’s owner and tennis phreak-in residence” and noted he was the great grandson of “Henry Miller, the famed California land baron who once owned one million acres.” The same story noted that Nickel had to help rescue his friends from the Kern River in a rubber raft supplied by him and his wife. 

Even though it was his ultimate dream, the Rio Bravo bubble soon burst, as Nickel filed for bankruptcy in 1985. 

The Rio Bravo hydroelectric power plant, left, with the Kern River in the background along state Route 178 in Bakersfield, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2021. 

Wells Fargo took over the resort to satisfy his $30 million debt. After that came a revolving door of ownership starting in the 1990s. Each consecutive owner made their plans: from building more housing, to turning it into a private athletic club, to transforming it into a giant retirement community. And each, consecutively, failed. 

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Having lived through enough uncertainty over the decades, the golf course and clubhouse were eventually taken over in May 2017 by a group of 13 Rio Bravo homeowners, whose goal was simply to save what was there and hopefully find a responsible steward to keep it going.

“We’re looking for someone that would restore it,” Randy Steinert, a representative of that ownership group, told SFGATE in 2022 while the club was for sale. “Most of us have our own businesses, local businesses and so on — we’re not country club owners. But faced with the issues of the former owners turning our backyards into dirt, we created a stop gap measure to turn it to something sellable.”

The Willers bought Rio Bravo in 2023 in a wave of optimism. “A major face-lift is in store for a 160-acre property in northeast Bakersfield that, though originally conceived as the city’s premiere golfing destination, suffered a noticeable decline before and after being taken over six years ago by local investors,” the Bakersfield Californian reported on Dec. 30, 2023.

While members and residents waited for these improvements, signs of the Willers’ disintegrating marriage surfaced last spring when the couple first separated. Kim Willer filed for a dissolution of marriage on Dec. 23, 2025, alleging domestic violence, KGET-TV reported in January.

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One of the fairways at the Rio Bravo Country Club near Bakersfield, Calif. 

The divorce petition isn’t the only legal action Jeremy Willer is currently embroiled in. A look through Kern County court records show he has four legal actions pending against him besides the dissolution of marriage, including two breach of contract lawsuits. A wrongful termination lawsuit was also filed against Rio Bravo Country Club LLC on Feb. 6; Kim Willer is also named in that lawsuit. SFGATE reached out to David Torres, Jeremy Willer’s attorney, for comment on Thursday but did not receive a call back before the time of publication. In addition, SFGATE reached out to Jeremy Willer via email on Friday but did not hear back before the time of publication.

The next date in Kern County court for the Willers is March 17, when the couple will have a hearing in an order to show cause over the domestic violence allegations in the dissolution of marriage lawsuit filed last December. 

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Rio Bravo closed down without warning in January, but a new owner named Randy Willer reopened it last month under a new name, Scarlet & Gray. Willer happens to be Jeremy’s father. SFGATE reached out to Scarlet & Gray and the elder Willer on Thursday for a comment about the club’s new name and future plans but did not hear back from him before the time of publication. 

For now, the story of Rio Bravo (or, Scarlet & Gray) is far from settled. Is there a future for the beloved club tucked into some of California’s most pristine, yet overlooked, hills and canyons? Or perhaps the final curtain has come down on this found oasis stitched forever into California lore.

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