Pierce Point Ranch
Pierce Point Ranch (also Pierce Ranch ) is a former dairy farm in Marin County , California . The operation was established by Solomon Pierce in the 1860s and was part of a series of ranches that supplied dairy products to southern San Francisco in the 19th and early 20th centuries . The ranch buildings are about 3 miles south of Tomales Point in what is now Point Reyes National Seashore . The facility is considered the best-preserved example of a 19th-century West Marin dairy farm and was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District on December 6, 1985 . Today it is used to reintroduce the Tule elk , a subspecies of the elk that was almost extinct in the mid-1870s .
Location and description
The pasture area belonging to Pierce Point Ranch forms the northern tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula. In the west the lands border on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean , in the east they are bordered by the coastline sloping down to Tomales Bay . The ranch buildings themselves are located in a ravine at the southern end of the area belonging to the business and are framed by hills both in the north and in the south.
The buildings that are preserved today include the two-storey house, a bathing house, a schoolhouse, various sheds, a barn for storing hay, a horse stable, two dairy buildings, chicken and pig stalls, a covered cistern, workshop building and several sleeping barracks for the ranch employees . bunkhouses ). To protect them from the wind, the buildings are enclosed on several sides by Monterey cypresses and other trees.
As the starting point for the Tomales Point Trail , a hiking trail to the northern tip of the peninsula, the ranch is visited by hikers and tourists all year round and offers them free parking spaces south of the ranch buildings. Visitors can learn more about the history and former use of the individual buildings from information boards.
history
Pierce Point Ranch was established as a dairy farm by Solomon Pierce in the 1860s. Pierce found ideal conditions for milk production on the Point Reyes Peninsula. The climate on the peninsula is relatively cool and humid and its northern tip is characterized by the open grassland of the California coastal prairie . Pierce was also able to benefit from the fact that the population of San Francisco increased by leaps and bounds in the decades after the start of the gold rush and he was thus able to serve a growing sales market.
Pierce Point Ranch was so successful after just a few years that Solomon Pierce built a second building complex. This second ranch was called "Lower Pierce Point Ranch" and no longer exists today; after its founding, today's ranch has been referred to as the "Upper Pierce Point Ranch".
The milk obtained at Pierce Point Ranch was still processed on the farm, since in the 19th century there were no suitable cooling facilities that would have enabled the unprocessed product to be transported to San Francisco. In special pans was Rahm won, which was further processed before place to butter. The leftover skimmed milk was fed to pigs. The products of the Pierce Point Ranch first reached their sales market in San Francisco on small schooners by sea. Only later was the road built that now leads south to Inverness .
After Solomon Pierce and his descendants leased the ranch since the 1880s, they sold the business to the McClure family in the mid-1930s. Production ceased in 1973 and just three years later, the ranch was given special protection as part of the Phillip Burton Wilderness under the Point Reyes National Seashore .
Todays use
In addition to being used as a destination for hikers and tourists, the Pierce Point Ranch is now one of the areas in California that is used for the resettlement of the Tule elk ( Cervus canadensis nannodes ). The subspecies of the North American elk was widespread in large parts of California before the arrival of European settlers and was almost extinct in the mid-1870s. After the stocks had gradually recovered through protective measures in other parts of California, the subspecies was officially placed under protection in 1971. In 1978 ten specimens were settled in the area of the Pierce Point Ranch. In 1998, the herd formed in this way reached a population of 500 animals for the first time and at that time is one of the largest of the total of 22 herds in the state. Between 2012 and 2014, the number of animals at the Pierce Point Ranch decreased from 540 to 286. While the park authorities attributed this decline to the drought in California that began in 2011 , the Center for Biological Diversity , a non-profit organization based in Tucson , Arizona, pointed out that Tule elk populations were elsewhere California's grew over the same period. Instead, the staff at the Center for Biological Diversity saw the reason for the loss of the population in the fencing of the animals at the Pierce Point Ranch and the associated fact that there were insufficient freshwater supplies for the Tule elk in the narrowly defined area. On the other hand, at the beginning of the 1990s, the ecological carrying capacity of the area was estimated at around 140 animals, so that an overpopulation has been living on the ranch for several decades now and population collapses are to be expected. The inventory decrease in 2012/13 was not the first either, which is why active inventory management was allowed in 1998, but was never implemented due to various influences.
gallery
Residential building
Old dairy
New dairy
Web links
- Ranching History at Point Reyes , background information on the history of ranching in Point Reyes
- Entry on the National Register of Historic Places
- Tule Elk - The Return of a Species , information on the reintroduction of the Tule Elk in Point Reyes National Seashore and general information on the species
- West Marin Citizen: A Brief History of Tule Elk on the Point Reyes Peninsula , March 19, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed June 1, 2016
- ↑ Kim Linse, National Park Service: Tule Elk - The Return of a Species , Point Reyes Station, CA 1998.
- ↑ a b c Kurt Repanshek: Tule Elk Deaths At Point Reyes National Seashore Bring Charges Of Mismanagement , in: National Parks Traveler of April 19, 2015, last accessed on April 20, 2015.
- ^ Sarah Rolph: Op-Ed | NPS Ecological Mismanagement: By Design? , April 26, 2015
Coordinates: 38 ° 11 '23.3 " N , 122 ° 57' 16.8" W.