and built a flume and ditch to deliver the water to the cropland in the area 

 between the milking barn and the McCurdy boundary fence to the south. 

 Strain and his hired man also cut cordwood for market during the time when 

 the cows were dry. His saw was also powered by water pressure. Strain sold 

 the produce and cordwood in Bolinas, most of it going to San Francisco by 

 schooner. Surplus corn was chopped up by the children and used as feed. 



Everett's father Henry Strain had built a horse barn during the early 

 years of his occupation of the ranch. He built it on a side hill with the stables 

 facing the drive from the county road to the dairy. By placing the barn in a cut 

 on the hillside he gained access to the upper story from behind. Everett Strain 

 continued to use the old horse barn for stabling his work horses. He cut a 

 better road on the hillside for easier access to the top floor. The family used a 

 carriage shed near the horse barn for storing their wagon and buggy. 



The children of Everett and Mary Strain attended the Wilkins School in 

 nearby Dogtown. The family had a private phone system that connected with 

 neighboring ranchers and an exchange in the store in Bolinas. For many years 

 the house had no running water, so Everett's mother Marcella did the washing 

 in the creek upstream from the milking barn. Mary McCurdy Strain was 

 known as a good cook, preparing food for the family and hired hand from the 

 garden; a butcher in Olema, Martinelli, delivered meat to the ranch regularly. 

 The family kept chickens in a large chicken shed northwest of the barn. The 

 Strains bought their first car, a Studebaker, in 1914. Everett Strain helped 

 maintain the county road, hauling rock from the Randall Ranch in his 

 Studebaker to fill potholes. 



Although located within yards of the San Andreas fault, the Strain Ranch 

 survived the 1906 earthquake with very little damage. Family tradition tells 

 that the cows stampeded and were stray for two days. Photographs taken 

 shortly after the temblor show chimneys and barns intact, but a fence offset 

 about ten feet on the fault line west of the barn. The photographs, taken by 

 geologist G. K. Gilbert, also show with great clarity the split picket and barbed 

 wire fences in the corrals southwest of the barn, the original creamery, the 

 orchard and the large Strain house on the hill (even the family laundry is 

 visible on the clotheslines next to the house). The forests of Bolinas Ridge to 

 the east are obviously scarred by the major fire of 1904. 38 



""Photographs by G. K. Gilbert are found in the U. S. Geological Survey Library, Menlo Park, 

 California. 



117 



