Santa Cruz Ranching District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Channel Islands National Park, National Park Service

Fitzgerald, Kathleen

The Santa Cruz Island Ranching District is a 14,000‑acre vernacular ranching landscape on the portion of Santa Cruz Island managed as part of the Channel Islands National Park. The remaining seventy‑six percent of the 62,000‑acre island is managed by The Nature Conservancy. Santa Cruz Island is physically characterized by the steep and rough slopes divided by three mountain ranges; two parallel ranges form the Central Valley and El Montañon to the east. Sheer cliffs drop into the Pacific Ocean, while open grasslands typify the upland areas and woody vegetation is found in dozens of canyons. Surrounded by the ocean, the ranch was historically accessed primarily through water landing in either Scorpion Harbor or Prisoners Harbor. The ranch collection of corrals, troughs, fences, residences, dry‑laid rock structures, and orchards forms an isolated landscape. The ranch complex appears today much as it did during the period of significance of 1880 to 1952 when the ranch was initially laid out and occupied by the Caire family and their employees, and later by the Gherini and Stanton families. 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, topography, small‑scale features, and archeology are contributing characteristics of the ranching landscape. Land use, however, does not contribute as the sheep ranching ceased on the east end in 1984, the remaining 9,000 sheep were removed from the island by 2000. On the isthmus in 1987, The Nature Conservancy acquired the Stanton property and also removed Stanton’s Hereford cattle. Overall, the landscape is in good condition due in part to the restoration of many of the buildings and structures and corrals by Channel Islands National Park and the Santa Cruz Island Foundation. 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. Overall, the landscape is in fair condition. 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.

Santa Cruz Ranching District: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Channel Islands National Park, National Park Service

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