This is the oldest home in Los Olivos California. Currently owned and restored by the Saarloos Family. This is a 3d laserscan of the home done by students at Santa Ynez High School in the EAST class. Here is a summary written by Mr. Etling:

About 128 years ago, sometime around 1880, on a bluff overlooking Alamo Pintado Creek, just north of the tiny town of Ballard, a house was underway. It was a two-story structure, with a wide, covered front porch, and neatly symmetrical arched windows in the center gable, situated on prime farmland.

It became the property of twenty-two-year-old Alden March Boyd, of Albany, New York, when he paid $8,000 for "157 acres, more or less, together with the dwelling house," in 1885. He planted five thousand olive trees, and called it Rancho De Los Olivos. When the trees matured, olive oil, ripe olives bottled in oil, and ripe mission olives in bulk were advertised for sale.

Boyd's older sister, Margaret, sketched the ranch house and numerous other local scenes on one of her visits. Her drawing shows it between two massive oaks, with rows of twig-like olive trees in the foreground.

The 1880s were a boom time for California. On November 16, 1887, the Pacific Coast Railway line extension from Los Alamos was completed. The developers of the narrow-gauge railway first named their town El Olivar, then El Olivos, and finally Los Olivos after Boyd's ranch. Optimistic salesmen hoped it would be the center of a new "North" Santa Barbara County, and labeled one block "Courthouse Square."

Alden Boyd married Margaret Alexander of Santa Barbara in 1889. Their daughter, Joan, remembered "one of my earliest memories was putting my arm, up to the shoulder, in the large vats of pickled olives at the olive house on the creek that ran through the ranch, and gathering up a fist full of delicious olives."

"There seemed so much to do - the hayrides; the horseback rides; the picnics and swims in the Santa Ynez River and Zaca Lake; picnics to Nojoqui Falls; the trips at Christmas time in the buckboard to the upper part of the Santa Agueda Canyon to get our Christmas tree, a digger pine; the long hot summer days, lying in the hammock on the veranda and listening to the bells on the grain wagon teams as they went by on the road below our hill, lost in a cloud of dust...it was such a thrill, too, listening to the eerie cry of the coyotes at night, in the hills across the road from our house - probably one or two, that sounded like ten.

"When I was a very young child, we went to Santa Barbara on the stagecoach over the San Marcos, and I remember my mother's story of how once a prisoner was among the passengers, with a ball and chain on his leg, and how he held the baby - my sister - when mother was sick! I can still hear the stage horses' heavy breathing as they stopped at Cold Spring, after their pull up the grade.

"Later, when the Southern Pacific was built, we took the stage, which stopped at our gate for us, and drove to Gaviota, and there waited many hours at the station for the train to take us to Santa Barbara. Oh, how hard those benches were during our weary wait! Once or twice a kindly brakeman let us ride to Santa Barbara in the caboose. Sometimes we drove our own spring wagon to Santa Barbara, and I remember the thrill when the horse's feet clattered on the first pavement, and we glimpsed the sparkling blue ocean at the foot of State Street.

"A high point in our lives was the arrival every year of the Chinese merchant, on foot, with a long pole across his shoulders and a big basket hanging on either end. Inside were such wonders as china tea sets, cups, silk scarves, chinese nuts and many more intriguing articles.

"In 1906, the telephone rang one day, and when my father answered the phone we sensed that something terrible had happened. When he turned from the phone, he told us that Mr. Mattei had announced that San Francisco had disappeared from the face of the earth. Later, of course, we learned that though the earthquake and fire were devastating, San Francisco was still there," wrote Joan Boyd.

Rancho de Los Olivos was the home of numerous prominent Santa Ynez Valley citizens over the years, and the old house was a silent witness to countless moments of joy, drama and sorrow. It grew, too, as plumbing, electricity, and new rooms were added.

In 1988, the Hopson family sold Rancho De Los Olivos to the Normans, who built a home adjacent to the century-old structure. And at two a.m. on Monday, November 25, 1991, the two-story home, now in two massive pieces, began to trundle from a staging area in a field beside Roblar Avenue to a new site about a mile away, at the corner of Nojoqui and Alamo Pintado Avenues in downtown Los Olivos. By eight am, Los Olivos had a new neighbor, just a stone's throw west of Patrick's Side Street Cafe.

The Rancho De Los Olivos homestead now houses various offices, and possibly a pioneer ghost or two, casting wry spectral glances at life in town.

свернуть