during this time were former wheat farmers from North Dakota who had come 

 west with the dust bowl migration of the mid 1930s. The hired hands lived in 

 the old creamery which had been remodeled into a bunkhouse. The family sold 

 vegetables and chickens to supplement the meager income made at the dairy. 

 Two orchards of apples and pears had been established earlier, one between the 

 house and the barn and the other in the field west of the calf barn; a few trees 

 remain. 



World War II proved to be a hardship for the family with son Kenneth, a 

 key laborer at the dairy, being drafted. For reasons unknown, the Army 

 occupied the northern part of the ranch during part of the war; Kenneth 

 Wilkins described how he and his father had to be escorted by soldiers in order 

 to take care of the cattle in the pastures around Copper Mine Gulch. 



Between 1951 and 1954 Jim Wilkins remodeled his family's eastern 

 portion of the old house. The ornate enclosed porch was removed and replaced 

 with a huge picture window with views to the lagoon. An addition on the east 

 side extended the house by about 10 feet. The interior was remodeled with 

 lower ceilings, a different stairway, and a new flagstone fireplace and chimney. 18 



Kenneth was also drafted to serve in Korea. Shortly after his return Jim 

 Wilkins died. Kenneth and his mother unsuccessfully ran the dairy and soon 

 leased it out to a succession of tenants including Tony Silva, who lived in the 

 east portion of the house after the sisters passed away. Kenneth Wilkins went 

 into the firewood business, cutting oak, bay and fir cordwood in the hills of the 

 ranch. 



Dairying at the ranch ended in the mid-1960s when Carnation, the San 

 Francisco creamery to which the Wilkins milk was sold, was bought by a Texas 

 company and the milk contracts in the area cancelled. Nearby dairyman Steve 

 Balzan attempted to get the Wilkins family involved in his local Jersey dairy 

 business but failed. 



Faced with skyrocketing taxes (reportedly from $1,200 per year in the 

 early 1960s to $22,000 in 1969) and low production at the ranch, the Wilkins 

 family decided to sell the ranch. They had already been approached by a land 

 developer who proposed clustered homes on the property; that plan did not 

 succeed. Then in 1970 a young, newly wealthy publisher from the East Coast 

 found what he saw as his new country home. 



'"Documented by Farrington Jones in 1951 and 1954, courtesy of Roy Farrington Jones. 



82 



