D Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore
Regions 8, 9, 10, & 12 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 2004. D Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 725011. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Pacific West Regional Office, San Francisco, California / CRIS-CL Database
Inventory Unit Description: D Ranch is an approximately 1,211-acre vernacular ranching landscape located in the western portion of the Point Reyes Peninsula in Point Reyes National Seashore. D Ranch is no longer occupied. However, the surrounding pastures are used by neighboring ranchers in exchange for removing their cattle from environmentally and culturally sensitive areas. The ranch is located on a marine headland that points south and encompasses Drakes Bay, cut by four large gulches draining southeast. Drakes Beach is located at the southern edge of the ranch, and Drakes Beach Road passes just to the west of the ranch complex. The surrounding pastures consist of grasslands on marine headlands, steep ravines with brushy slopes, and rocky beaches at the foot of steep cliffs. The ranch complex sits on a high point of the headlands with several houses, barns, out-buildings, a lone palm tree, a remnant tree from the Monterey cypress windbreak, and some modest ornamental vegetation. The complex is surrounded concentrically by corrals, pastures, and grazing lands that slope down to the bay and estero. D Ranch, which operated, without interruption, as a dairy ranch for 127 years, appears today much as it did during the period of significance of 1857 to 1956 when the ranch was initially developed by Captain Henrik Claussen for Oscar and James Shafter and Charles Webb Howard as part of the tenant-operated dairy ranch system on the peninsula. This period encompasses the construction of the major developments at the ranch including the roads, structures, fencelines, and landscape vegetation. The historic D Ranch complex is nearly intact with only two non-contributing, but compatible, structures. The original ranch house, residence, old creamery, horse barn, old milking barn, bunk house, wood shed, two garages, and a Grade A milking barn exist side-by-side with the more recent shed and residence. Spatial organization, land use, vegetation, circulation, buildings and structures, and cluster arrangement are contributing landscape characteristics of the vernacular ranching landscape. The Horick family left the D Ranch in 1999 after more than 65 years ranching by the family.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Regions 8, 9, 10, & 12 Park Cultural Landscapes Program
- Date of Issue
- 2004-09-15
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- PORE , PWR
- Keywords
- agriculture, architecture, barn, commerce, dairy ranch, Drakes Bay, exploration - settlement, grazing, Hall Ranch, Henrik Claussen, historic vernacular landscape, livestock, milking barn, ranch house, ranching community, ranching landscape, tenant ranch, vernacular architecture, Vivian Horick Ranch