Guenoc
By: Bill Wink © 2001-2016
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PART I
“From The Land Grant to the
Ranch”
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GUENOC 1845 - 1958 By:
Bill Wink © 2001 From
the Land Grant to the Ranch For
this purpose, “The Beginning” was when the last Mexican Governor of
California, Pio Pico, awarded a land grant to George Rock and that Grant was
called GUENOC. Recorded
history implies that event took place on August 8, 1845 and according to the
State of California encompassed 21,220.03 acres. A significant point to make right away is the accepted
pronunciation of the proper noun, “Guenoc” which is: “Gwen-nok”. Another point to be made is the spelling of Mr. Rock’s last
name. According to ancestral data
found on the Internet, the man’s name was Rock, however he is also referred
to as George Roch. “Wen-Nok” There
is some controversy over the origination of the name Guenoc and I suppose the
reason for any controversy is because the name is so unusual and doesn’t seem
to have any significance in the Spanish language. One
opinion has been presented by an ancestor of Mr. Rock. This person tells of Mr. Rock being born in
Canada and because Mr. Rock’s name could have been Le Roch and because he was
born in Canada and because a surname in Canada is Le Guenoc; he thinks maybe
Mr. Rock’s mother’s name may have been Le Guenoc. Therefore he, George Rock, named the land
grant Guenoc. Possible I suppose, but
you have to fill in the blanks with supposition to get there. Another
opinion has been presented by Magoon Estate Ltd. on their Guenoc Winery’s
Website. Their opinion collides rather
dramatically with what most of the prior owners of Guenoc Ranch accepted and
believed and that is:
Near that lake was an important
living area for the local natives who lived in the heart of the land grant
and the name of that lake was “Wen-nok”. This has not been written of just
once but has generally been accepted by the majority of historians as the
true origination of the name. The
Guenoc Land Grant originated just over 150 years ago. The Native Americans lived around “Wen-nok”
for centuries. The similarity in
pronunciation and the geographical location of both “Wen-nok” and “Guenoc” is
far more persuasive than just pure supposition. I firmly believe the name came from the
Indian name for a lake, “Wen-nok”.
“From The Land Grant
To The Ranch” Click HERE
to see a larger version of the map
This is
followed by the recorded land grant in 1845. Next
George appears in the Coyote Valley as an agent for Jacob P. Leese as early
as 1848, probably, and lived in a log house near the site of the stone house
now on the north side of the valley.
(J. Broome Smith had a log house there in 1852. R. H. Sterling and
Captain Steele built the stone house mentioned above in 1854. Sterling had a
family with him, and his wife was the first woman in the valley. W. H, Manlove, T. Hall, Henry Bond, — Barnes,
W. G. Cannon, L. B. Tremper, B. F. Miles and James S. Miles were old settlers
in Coyote Valley. Source: “History of Napa
and Lake Counties, California 1881) Then
somewhere along the way, and I’m not sure where, George Rock appears to have
lost interest in his fortune, the Guenoc Land Grant, and several settlers
established themselves over the land. Shortly
after George Rock was gifted the land grant, California became a State and in
1852 the land encompassed by the grant was legally delegated to two men named
Ritchie and Forbes who set about evicting all the settlers. They then divided and sold the property. There
is some reference to George living in the old “Stone House” that is now a historical
landmark north of Middletown on property that would have been part of the
original grant. But that could not
have been until after he lost the land grant as the stone house wasn’t built
until 1854. Some of
the early settlers who acquired land from Ritchie and Forbes or were owners
of property that eventually became part of the present day Guenoc Ranch are:
Art Bohn, Amel Lelaine, Ike Shaw, Jim Watson, the Ink
family, Brookina, Pennacost,
Freddie Gebhard, Lillie Langtry,
Mostick, Herman, Hennessey and McCreery. In the
late 1800s early 1900s A. B. McCreery bought up the land that belonged to:
Bohn, Ink, Gebhard, Shaw, Lelaine, Watson and Pennacost. This was the beginning of the property
holdings that are presently referred to as Guenoc Ranch. But the
man who was responsible for using his wits, power and money to form the land
holdings that would encompass nearly the identical number of acres and a
large percentage of the same land as the original Grant was William F. Detert
and he named his land holdings; Guenoc Rancho.
William F. Detert passed away in 1929
and his estate continued to own and operate Guenoc Ranch until they sold it
in 1952 to Woodland Farms.
Foley
also owned a purebred cattle operation in Santa Barbara, CA. By 1957
land values in the Santa Barbara area made it unfeasible to continue that
operation and Foley Farms Inc. was born and moved to Guenoc Ranch in 1958/59.
“Guenoc Rancho 1955”
Around
the main house were a garage, a smoke house and an outdoor storage building
for processed foods. The water came
from a spring some distance away that filled a concrete cistern atop a little
hill in the center of all this area.
This is the area and house that the famous British stage actress,
Lillie Langtry, owned and visited in 1888. About a
mile east of the main ranch headquarters was another residence they called
the lodge. This was the place where
the Foleys and their guests stayed when visiting the ranch. There was a nicer two story house that had
a great room with fireplaces at each end, a screened porch that was on two
sides of the house, maid’s quarters and several bedrooms. The grounds included a fenced swimming
pool, another small house that the chauffeur stayed in, a garage and a
covered, hand dug, lined well with a bucket pulley overhead. Nearby was also
a large barn they called the Detert Barn but that was obviously much older
than the main house. There
were some new hay barns scattered around the property. One on the old Hennessy property
appropriately called the Hennessy Barn, another below Detert Dam called the
South Barn, one at the old Ink Ranch called the Ink Barn and one across Putah
Creek called the Putah Creek Barn. The Ink
Barn was next to the old round corrals which were just a short distance from
the old Ink house that was still standing. Next to the old house was a dug
out hillside spring that was used for drinking water and a cool room and
between the old round corrals and the house was a horse barn.
There was
also a line shack at the rim area of the Big Basin located between Big Basin
and Upper Bohn Lake. There
were various stock ponds plus Detert Reservoir, McCreary Lake, Lower Bohn
Lake and Upper Bohn Lake. Detert
Reservoir was used for irrigation of pasture as was McCreary Lake as was the
canal that flowed between Detert and McCreary. The irrigation system in place was quite
extensive and approximately 500 acres were under irrigation. You
could travel by jeep from the main part of the ranch to Putah Creek in the
dry months but by winter you would travel by horseback to the back of the
ranch. There
was electricity around the main ranch and the lodge and private phone lines
that were run across McCreary Lake and hooked into the Bell System near the Boucher
Property.
“Foley And Guenoc
Ranch” In Mr.
E. T. Foley’s book, The Story Of Foley
Farms, he ends the book with a quote and I quote him: “At Guenoc we welcome visitors interested in seeing our
historic old rancho and our cattle. To them we extend the greeting of the
“Californios” in the stately tongue of the Rancho’s earliest days –Dichosos los ojos que le ven! Delighted are the eyes that behold you!” In this
one quote, Foley acknowledges that others walked this land before him and he
salutes those persons. He also
realized his obligation to preserve the past, protect the present and secure
the future. I
believe Foley realized owning Rancho Guenoc was a privilege that was not
offered everyone, and like W.F. Detert he knew the rancho was not a
possession to be thought of without the respect it deserved.
When it was determined
Foley Farms would be moving to Guenoc, huge improvements were planned. Guenoc would no longer be Every year there
was a cattle drive from the ranch headquarters to the Neil Range where the
cattle were taken to graze. The Tom
Neil Range was across Putah Creek in Napa County toward Pope Valley. In fact the range was owned by the same Tom
Neil who at that time owned the Pope Valley Store. This took an entire day of riding on
horseback from daylight to dusk to accomplish. This drive soon vanished as pastures close
by were developed but what an experience it was. You spent the first half of the day getting
there, stopped and ate your warm sandwich, then spent the rest of the day
returning home.
1958 witnessed the
beginnings of dramatic change at Guenoc Ranch. Guenoc had been a pure, hard core, beef
cattle operation that was about an earthy life style, consisting of mud, cow
manure, barbed wire, branding, castrating, rattlesnakes, broken knuckles and
work from daylight to dark. It was a
place where you learned about life and death and how to sweat. If you could move you were expected to work
and holidays were for city folks. If
an old cow got the best of you it was funny to everybody else who witnessed
your pain. You learned cow manure
wasn’t dirty if it hadn’t touched the ground and you drank water from a
“crick” and never questioned what was up stream. Horses were a tool and were used for
workin’ and other animals were fer eatin’.
The approach to civilization was: “If those damn deer belong to the
State, then get’em outa’ my alfalfa before I shoot’em.” The bunkhouse was no place for girls and
Jack the cook never went to church but always had an Eskimo Pie when I
visited. Buck Bell, the irrigator, was
a grizzled little guy who never met a bottle he didn’t like, never went to
town in the summer and hated the mosquitoes.
However, things, they were a changin’.
Just lovin’ being outdoors with life wasn’t going to cut it
anymore. No, … part of Guenoc was
going to move from guts to genteelism. California
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