fautrever.com

Last time we stayed in the Healdsburg area (2006) we were intrigued by the names of two nearby state parks that Lance noticed on a map of the region. (Lance pores over maps the way some people peruse a good book.) Since we are both avid readers, the names caught our attention: Robert Louis Stevenson State Park and Jack London State Historic Park. Unfortunately, time ran out before we had a chance to visit either park. This time I was determined to learn more about these parks named after the famous authors.

I hopped on the Internet and researched the parks before leaving to visit them. And boy, am I glad I did. I started with the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park since it was the closer of the two. I was disappointed to discover that the only association the park had with the author was that Stevenson spent his honeymoon there in 1880. He and his new wife, Fanny, were too poor to afford a nice trip or a place to stay, so they stayed in an old, abandoned mining camp on the side of Mount Saint Helena.

The building where they spent their two-month-long honeymoon, roughing it in the wild, has long since disappeared and all that remains of Stevenson’s stay is a small plaque. Though Stevenson did later write about their experiences in a travel memoir called Silverado Squatters, it doesn’t seem that he was there long enough to have the park named after him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the park exists and that history is preserved, but there are many other valid naming options for this park. While the landscape of the park sounded wonderful and the trail to the top of the mountain was inviting, in the interest of making the most of my time, I scratched the park off my list.

And so it came to pass that during the week I found myself out at Jack London’s Beauty Ranch. London first purchased land on the side of Sonoma Mountain overlooking the “Valley of the Moon” near Glen Ellen in 1905. Through the next six years, London continued to buy up more worn-out farmland and vineyards, eventually increasing the size of his ranch to 1,400 acres. London, the highest paid author in the world at that time, was seeking not only an escape from crowded city life, but he had an earnest desire to repair the damage done to the land and make it productive again.

London was born in San Francisco in 1876 to an aloof mother and an absent father. London’s mother couldn’t breast feed, so her friend, a black woman named Virginia “Jennie” Prentiss, served as his wet-nurse. Jennie figured prominently in the young man’s rough-and-tumble years. London lived through hard times as a young man; he started working at the age of 10 and had several dangerous and low-paying jobs before finally earning money with his writing. It was during those early years—after being cheated on his wages and arrested for vagrancy—that London became a registered socialist. He came to believe in the agrarian dream that land was the true source of wealth and once said, “If we redeem the land, it will redeem us!”

To that end London employed several new techniques on his ranch, like hillside terracing, liberal use of manure fertilizers, more hygienic methods of raising animals, and experimented with new crop cultivars. London greatly admired the work of botanist Luther Burbank, a neighbor from nearby Santa Rosa who he called the “Plant Wizard.” On his ranch, Jack planted some of Burbank’s plum and potato varieties. Though London proclaimed his devotion to his ranch and called the ranch home, in truth he was rarely there for more than half the year and the ranch never turned a profit.

Of course with London writing so prodigiously, the ranch didn’t need to make money. He followed a strict regimen of writing at least a thousand words a day, six days a week. As popular as he was, selling his scribbles was easy enough to do, though many critics feel that he sacrificed quality for quantity—especially after 1910. Between 1900 and 1916, London authored over 50 books plus numerous stories and articles.

London viewed his years on the ranch, which he shared with his second wife Charmian, as the best years of his life. London was a passionate man who was constantly seeking out excitement; he was a wanderer and a world traveler, and Charmian was his constant companion throughout his adventures. In 1913 they were just weeks away from moving into their dream home that was built on the ranch (the Wolf House), when it burned to the ground. The massive 15,000 square-foot house was constructed of local materials and had been designed to withstand earthquakes, floods, and fires. Of the house Jack once said, “My house will be standing, act of God permitting, in a thousand years.” The financial loss was staggering but it was the emotional loss that hit London the hardest.

He threw himself into his ranching and his writing, determined to make enough money to rebuild. Time was not kind and after 40 years of passionate living, Jack succumbed to kidney failure in 1916. All those years of working hard and playing hard caught up with him. London is buried on his Beauty Ranch on a hillside near the graves of two small children. The children, whom he featured in one of his stories, were not his—instead they were from one of the early pioneer farming families.

Charmian stayed on at the ranch after his death and dedicated the rest of her life to curating London’s works and protecting his memory. In 1919 she had the House of Happy Walls—a scaled down version of the Wolf House—constructed on the property. There she lived until her death in 1955. Charmian was buried next to her famous husband on a hill overlooking the burned out ruin of their dream house. At Charmian’s request, after her death the house and a small portion of Beauty Ranch were preserved as a memorial to Jack London.

In 1959 the site was dedicated as a state park, and since then it has grown to encompass over 800 acres of London’s dream ranch. The park includes the House of Happy Walls, which serves as part museum and part Visitor Center. Nearby are the graves of both the Londons, the ruins of Wolf House, the Cottage where they lived and Jack did his writing, the small lake and bathhouse, as well as various ranch-related structures. The main chunk of land not owned by the park is in the hands of Jack’s nephew who still raises grapes on the Jack London vineyard near the center of the ranch property.

It is a gorgeous location; it is easy to see why Jack called it the Beauty Ranch. As I explored the House of Happy Walls I came across a display of plates that Jack and Charmian had purchased while on one of their adventures in the South Seas. They were Robert Louis Stevenson’s plates from his home in Samoa. Though they never met, Jack admired Stevenson. The more I think about the two authors the more similarities I see. Both struggled with poor health, both pursued and wrote about the adventurous life, they both died young (in their early 40s), and both have ties to mountains in the Sonoma Valley.

The Jack London State Historic Park is yet another reason to spend time in the Sonoma Valley.

Photos: View our photographs from A Visit to Beauty Ranch.

Notes: Erin visited Beauty Ranch and the Jack London State Historic Park on 05/07/2008.