C Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore
Regions 8, 9, 10, & 12 Park Cultural Landscapes Program. 2004. C Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 725017. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. NPS Pacific West Regional Office, San Francisco, California / CRIS-CL Database
Inventory Unit Description: C Ranch is an approximately 1,062-acre vernacular ranching landscape located near the western end of the Point Reyes Peninsula in Point Reyes National Seashore. C Ranch is currently a Grade A dairy operated by the Spaletta family. C Ranch, the third ranch north from the lighthouse, is bounded north by D and E Ranches, east by Drakes Bay, south by B Ranch, and west by the Pacific Ocean. Sir Francis Drake Boulevard bisects the property and the ranch complex itself, with the dwellings, shops and new hay barn on the west, the dairy and feed barn on the east. Traffic is stopped twice a day as cows cross the road to and from their milking. The ranch complex is located near the center of the property, on a wide flat area. The surrounding pastures are comprised mostly of grassland, with dunes at the Pacific frontage and brushy area in the gulches. Four of the original structures remain at C Ranch, along with the ranch collection of corrals, fences, and windbreaks to form an intact vernacular ranching landscape. C Ranch 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 original house, old milking barn, bunkhouse and small shed, as well as the rebuilt horse barn still remain. The ranch appears to retain its historic patterns of corrals and pastures, enclosed with board and barbed wire fences. Two groves of Monterey cypress trees, one on the west side of the house and the other south of the milking barn, survive, and new trees of the same species have been planted north of the house. Spatial organization, land use, vegetation, circulation, buildings and structures, and cluster arrangement are contributing landscape characteristics of the vernacular ranching landscape.
- 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, bunkhouse, commerce, corrals, dairy ranching, exploration - settlement, fencelines, Grade A dairy, Henrik Claussen, historic vernacular landscape, livestock, Monterey cypress, Ranching communities, ranching landscape, tenant ranching, vernacular architecture