Tehama
County
Biographies
STANFORD VINA RANCH
Among
the model agriculture properties of Tehama County is numbered the Stanford Vina
Ranch, Vina, California, owned and operated by the Stanford Ranch Company,
Incorporated. The history of the ranch
is an interesting one and dates from 1843.
It was in the summer of that year that two men, General John Bidwell and
Peter Lassen, then in the employ of General Sutter, were tracking some horse thieves
from Sacramento northwest through the Sacramento Valley; and as they reached
the river bottom near Chico, General Bidwell thought he had never seen a more
fertile or inviting country. Peter
Lassen thought the same when he arrived at the fertile spot where Deer Creek
empties into the Sacramento River. After
catching the horse thieves near Red Bluff both Bidwell and Lassen returned to
Sacramento, where they obtained Mexican land grants, and by the spring of 1844
were farming their new lands, Bidwell at Chico and Lassen at what has since been
called Vina, due to the immense vineyards formerly there.
Lassen
knew good land and water rights and since 1844 this Mexican grant of his has
been known the state over for its deep, rich and fertile soil. In 1881 Senator Leland Stanford acquired the
property and at his death it passed to Stanford University. Its history is generally known to lovers of
agriculture and horticulture. In 1846
General Fremont spent three weeks there.
In 1848 the first Masonic lodge in California held its first meeting on
the ranch there. In 1869 Gerke brought
vines and trees from Los Angeles by pack mule and soon had a flourishing irrigated
vineyard and orchard, famed throughout the valley. Irrigation had been started several years
previous to this.
When
Senator Stanford acquired the ranch he used one portion for his famous race
horses, another for his range cattle, another portion for sheep and still
another for a registered Holstein-Friesian dairy herd, which contained the
first advance registry Holstein ever in California. With all this stock business, Senator
Stanford planted an immense vineyard of five thousand acres, brought
wine-making from France, erected extensive brick buildings for winery purposes,
also planting English walnuts, pecans, chestnuts, oranges, lemon, grapefruit,
figs, peaches, pears, prunes, apricots and almost every commercial variety of
fruit or nut tree, all of which did well from the start.
In
1918 Stanford University sold the land and since then some of it has been
subdivided. The following is copied from
Page 72, of the Soil Survey Report of the United States Department of
Agriculture. “The Vina fine sandy loam,
because of its depth, friable structure, natural fertility and water holding
capacity, is one of the most valuable soils in the area. It is all capable of irrigation and
considerable development along this line has taken place. It is too valuable a soil for grain growing,
although heavy crops are obtained with irrigation. Peaches, prunes, almonds, apricots, bush
fruits, grapes, melons and truck crops are all grown with success. With good methods of irrigation and under
local climatic conditions this soil has a wide crop range as any other soil in
northern California.”
Gravity
irrigation water is obtained from Deer Creek, a wonderful stream that heads in
the snows and lava beds near Mount Lassen.
The water is handled and distributed by the Stanford Vina Ranch
Irrigation Company, a mutual water company, with a charge of one dollar per
acre per year for water. A high degree
of efficiency is maintained in the operation of the ranch, which for eleven
years has been under the progressive management of Colonel F. T. Robson, who is
part owner thereof.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
Wooldridge, J.W.Major History of Sacramento Valley
California, Vol. 2 Pages 418-419. Pioneer Historical
Publishing Co. Chicago 1931.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden
Nugget Library's Tehama County Biographies