Pierce Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore

Regions 8, 9, 10, & 12 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

Inventory Unit Description: Pierce Ranch is an approximately 2,200-acre vernacular ranching landscape on the northern tip of Point Reyes Peninsula in Point Reyes National Seashore. Pierce Ranch is no longer a working ranch; the ranch serves as an interpretive site and the main residence is used as park housing. Pierce Ranch straddles the Inverness Ridge, which narrows to Tomales Point. The land surrounding the ranch drops away sharply into rolling hills and ravines toward the Pacific Ocean to the west and Tomales Bay to the east. Tomales Bay meets the Pacific Ocean to the north at Tomales Point. J Ranch is located along the southern boundary of Pierce Ranch. The ranch complex is located on relatively flat land, flanked by higher land to the north and south. The surrounding ranch pastures are now grazed by Tule elk and native vegetation has been allowed to re-establish. This area no longer contributes to the landscape and only the ranch complex is further discussed. The Pierce Ranch complex 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. In 1858 the Shafters and Howord sold Pierce Ranch to Solomon Pierce, marking the only exception to the agreement not to sell any of the Shafter/Howard land on Point Reyes Peninsula. The core of Pierce Ranch initially included approximately twenty buildings, built by the Pierce family, independent of the Shafter/Howard dairy operations found on the peninsula. Unlike the Shafter/Howard ranch layout, Pierce Ranch was loosely divided into three areas: a domestic area, a dairy-operation area, and a transportation and livestock area. The domestic area incorporated housing, education, laundry, and storage related buildings. The dairy-operations area incorporated milking, processing, and feeding related buildings. The transportation and livestock area contained the horse barn, chicken houses, and slaughterhouse, and carriage and wagon storage related buildings. This period encompasses the construction of these major developments at the ranch including; the roads, structures, fencelines, and landscape vegetation. Spatial organization, vegetation, circulation, buildings and structures, and cluster arrangement are contributing landscape characteristics of the vernacular ranching landscape.

Pierce Ranch: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Point Reyes National Seashore

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