Caire-Gherini Ranch Historic District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Cruz Island Ranching District, National Park Service

Fitzgerald, Kathleen; Provencher, Shaun

The Caire‑Gherini Ranch Historic District is an approximately 6,253‑acre vernacular ranching landscape on the eastern side of Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park. The east end of Santa Cruz Island is physically characterized by the steep and rough slopes of El Montañon to the west; sheer cliffs dropping into the Pacific Ocean to the north, south, and east; and dozens of canyons. Open grasslands typify the upland areas while woody vegetation is found in the canyons. Surrounded by the ocean and the El Montañon ridge, the ranch was historically accessed primarily through water landing in the harbor at Scorpion Ranch and on foot over El Montañon. The ranch collection of corrals, troughs, fences, residences, outbuildings, dry‑laid rock structures, and orchards forms a discrete isolated landscape on an already isolated island. The ranch complex appears today much as it did during the period of significance of 1880 to 1937 when the ranch was initially laid out and occupied by the Caire family and their employees, and later by the Gherini family. This period encompasses the construction of the major developments at the ranch including the roads, structures, fencelines, and landscape vegetation when the ranch was most productive and viable. Natural systems and features, spatial organization, vegetation, circulation, buildings and structures, cluster arrangement, and small‑scale features are contributing characteristics of the ranching landscape. Land use does not contribute as the sheep ranching ceased in 1984, however the 9,000 sheep were not completely removed from the island until 2000. Topography does not contribute due to the extensive movement of soil and rocks during major flooding in 1997. The Santa Cruz Island Ranching District is locally significant as one of the earliest sustained ranches on Santa Cruz Island, with a long history of land use from the rancho period through the modern era. The ranch is also locally significant as a rare example of vernacular French Alps architecture on the west coast of the United States. The period of significance of the Santa Cruz Island Ranching District is 1880 to 1952, a period beginning with the full ownership of Justinian Caire and commencement of his widespread development of the island as a premier sheep ranch and winery, continuing through the ownership of the east end by Caire heirs Maria and Ambrose Gherini, and through the early period of Edwin Stanton’s ownership culminating in the construction of Rancho del Norte in 1952. Sheep ranching was the primary land use by Justinian Caire and his sons who occupied Santa Cruz Island from 1880 to 1937. The practice was continued by the family of Caire’s granddaughter Maria Gherini on the east end of the island until 1984 when active sheep ranching ceased. During the 1940s Edwin Stanton, buyer of the Caire portion of the island in 1937, converted the ranching operation on the remaining ninety percent of the island from sheep to cattle. Stanton continued the traditional uses of Prisoners Harbor and the historic livestock boat Santa Cruz and developed Rancho del Norte as the focal point of cattle operations on the isthmus. Neither the Gherinis nor the Stantons maintained the level of sustainability or economic viability achieved during the Caire era, but both continued livestock operations in a traditional manner. The district represents the initial ranching developments on Santa Cruz Island by Caire and his successors as one of several ranches on California’s Channel Islands—a unique and specialized livestock raising location.

Caire-Gherini Ranch Historic District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Santa Cruz Island Ranching District, National Park Service

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