Nicolas Marsch III

A native of Chicago, where his family was in the construction business, Marsch took the helm of the enterprise in the 1970s and set out to make his fortune as a developer in California and Colorado. Marsch ultimately set his sights on Rancho Santa Fe, 25 miles north of downtown San Diego. Described by CBS sportscaster and former resident Dick Enberg as "Beverly Hills in the country," the very private suburb caught the world's attention in 1997 when 39 cultists at a rented mansion poisoned themselves in expectation of ascending to a spaceship. Marsch had purchased much of the Rancho Santa Fe land by the early 1980s. He launched the project he then called Horizon Country Club in 1985, in a partnership with a wealthy Northern California developer, Ronald Williams.