f you brake for open house signs or spend weekends viewing model homes, here are some very special houses we'll bet you've never stopped to see — even though you may drive by them every day. Okay, so they're not for sale and the decor is dated, but step inside and you'll be whisked back to the days of California's ranchos, when cattle herds roamed open land

Life, love, and loss in 19th-century rural California By Annette Winter Photographs by Todd Masinter

that stretched from the ocean to the mountains. Originally built by Native Americans out of mud and straw adobe bricks, these were the first dwellings constructed on former mission lands. The owners (Mexican rancheros and a few Yankee entrepreneurs) hosted noisy fiestas and dusty roundups. After California became a state, the adobes housed American ranchers and their families. The ranchos, often the center of community life in an area, were almost totally self-sufficient and employed a multiethnic labor force that included Native American and Mexican cowboys, Yankee blacksmiths, Chinese cooks, Basque sheepherders, and Irish seamstresses.

The landowners made and lost fortunes, but, in many cases, their houses remain. Here are a few well worth a detour. They're in various stages of restoration and preservation; most offer guided tours and numerous public events. For up-to-date visitor information, call the individual sites.

Rancho Guajome Adobe
Vista — Tennessee-born Cave Johnson Couts was a young army lieutenant when he reported to the garrison in San Diego in 1849. On duty, he escorted the Mexican-American boundary commissioners on surveys and mapped and named San Diego–area streets. Off duty, he met Ysidora Bandini, daughter of a prominent local family. When the couple married in 1851, her brother-in-law,

Rancho Guajome Adobe, above and top.

Abel Stearns, gave Ysidora more than 2,000 acres at Rancho Guajome, purchased for $550 from two Native American brothers who held the original land grant. Couts's earlier investments in cattle and land had reaped profits, and in 1853, the newlyweds built an elegant home (pictured) on the property using beams and tiles from nearby abandoned Mission San Luis Rey (provided in exchange for a donation to the diocese). Like most American-built California ranch houses of the mid-1800s, their home incorporated the best of two cultures: Courtyards reflected Ysidora's heritage; wooden floors, glazed windows, and fireplaces provided American-style comforts. Couts added a small store in the home, where he resold goods fetched from San Diego. Fifteen years after he built the house and store, Couts added a chapel that gave visiting padres a place to say mass for the rural faithful. The present site covers 165 acres. 2210 N. Santa Fe Avenue; (760) 724-4082. The site is closed during rain because there are no paved roads.

Rancho Camulos
Piru — When author Helen Hunt Jackson visited Rancho Camulos in the late 1800s, it was a peaceful rancho where the prosperous del Valle family raised

Ygnacio del Valle's winery (above) survives with a little help necessitated by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Other rancho-period survivors include a black walnut tree (below, right) and a fountain (below, left).

wine grapes and citrus. By the time she left, Jackson had an idea for a book. Her novel Ramona was published in 1884 and launched a nationwide love affair with her romantic depiction of life and love on a California rancho. Period postcards played up the association with Camulos, and thousands of tourists headed west, disembarking at the Southern Pacific Railroad's new Rancho Camulos depot to camp (according to popular myth) on the del Valles' land and inspect Ramona's "home." The tourists left, but the rancho remains.

Originally part of a 48,000-acre land grant given to Antonio del Valle in 1839, the 40-acre site, set among 1,800 acres of ranch and farmland, retains an early California feel. It includes the hacienda-style adobe, private chapel, winery, and fountain built by del Valle's son Ygnacio in the mid-1800s. In 1924, the del Valle family sold its remaining acreage to August Rübel. His descendants are restoring the site, which includes a spectacular 130-year-old black walnut tree with a branch span of half an acre. The house is currently unfurnished, but you can see a few del Valle artifacts at the recently restored Vickers Library at the Pierpont Inn in Ventura. State Highway 126, two miles east of Piru; (805) 521-1501.

California's Ranchos, Part Two

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