Jonathan Reiter went to sea with the U.S. Navy in 1963 at age 18 and was trained as a navigator, covering almost 60,000 nautical miles in 20 months at an average speed of seven miles an hour.
In other words, he was at sea the vast majority of his time and it must have got into his blood, because he spent the next thirty-odd years in various ships, tug boats and yachts traveling the world’s oceans and waterways.

He was a deck hand, mate and ship’s master at various times. He has owned over twenty vessels and captained dozens more. He worked in many boatyards and helped build a wide range of sailing and luxury motor yachts.
Jonathan first went to New Mexico in 1973 where he promptly traded his Volkswagen convertible for a 4 ½ year old buckskin stallion named Dynamite, complete with saddle, spurs, and cowboy hat.
After a year of roaming the mountains around Taos, Jon sold Dynamite to a fellow who owned a feed store and went back to roaming the seven seas.
Retired now, he bought Salado Canyon Ranch with his wife Suzanne and they are in the process of building their dream ranch.
He splits his time between their home on California’s central coast, Salado Canyon Ranch and wherever their sloop” Glorious” is.

Suzanne Reiter literally grew up on the back of a horse. At age three she was given her first quarter horse, ‘John’, and began a lifelong relationship with horses. Suzanne never outgrew her need for equine companionship or her thirst for more and more knowledge of her charges. When she married into a Central California Coast ranching family at age 19 she began her apprenticeship under the supervision of Old California style, ‘Californio’ horse trainers, whose methods of starting, training and finishing bridle horses dated back to the 1700s. She went on to become a  horse trainer and breeder, showing and judging horses professionally and operating her own facility at her ranch in Sisquoc Valley, California for twenty-five years, then, after winding down her horse business, she saddled up and went to law school. She’s been in private practice for over 16 years. Recently, her youngest son, Chris, has passed the California Bar and entered the firm. Suz still had a ½ dozen of her old ‘show’ stock left, geldings she had bred and trained, a three-time state champion among them, most of them now well into their twenties when she met Jon Reiter, recently drifted ashore, and it was the sea bum who encouraged Suz to dust off the saddle collection and start riding the old show horses purely for recreation. They made trips to New Mexico at the slightest excuse and fell in love all over again with The Land of Enchantment.

During her life, Suzanne has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience about equine care and management. Outside the show arena and the cattle business Suzanne has organized and packed parties into the Sierras for weeks at a time and ridden extensively in the mountainous areas of California just for the joy of trail riding. Acquiring Salado Canyon Ranch has opened the possibility of sharing the joy of extensive trail riding with others who seek an opportunity to get out and just ride in wide open spaces.

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