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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS March, 1907 



Life on An Olive Ranch 



By Charles F. Holder 



HEN the wild olive was discovered 

 and under cultivation turned into the 

 olive of to-day is not known. Its his- 

 tory in this country is fairly well 

 known. In the seventeenth century 

 it found its way from Europe to 

 Mexico. When the splendid chain 

 of Missions was begun on the Pacific 

 coast the padres planted the olive. 

 It found a home in congenial sur- 

 roundings and groves of olive trees sprang up from San Diego 

 to Santa Barbara, many of the old trees still standing about 

 the ruins of the old buildings. They seem to blend well with 

 long corridors, tiled roofs, and the rich tones of adobe in 

 the shadow of the cross. The exact date of the coming of 

 the oli\'e to Southern California was doubtless 1769, when an 

 expedition sailed from San Bias, Mexico, and one Jose de 

 Galvez saw that the vessel was provided with "seeds and 

 plants." The olive was first planted at San Diego Mission 

 from the Galvez supply, and from these grew the tall, wil- 

 lowy, graceful trees known as the Mission olive. 



Little wonder that men and women in Southern California 

 are fascinated with the olive. It has an aroma of Araby the 

 blest, of the Orient, and there is an estheticism about it that 

 lures men on to cultivate it, whether there is profit in it or not. 

 Your true poet scorns return in lucre, so I fancy do some olive 

 men I have met. 



One of the padres at the Mission of Santa Barbara was 

 showing me the olive grove one day — a genial, kindly man, 

 with a fund of wit — and as we strolled up to the Mission 

 and parted he said that "all the oli\'e men who were success- 



ful were artists. Their homes were beautiful, they had the 

 poetic nature," and then he told me of "Elwood," and the 

 day following I rode out of the old Spanish town, by its lofty 

 mountains the Sierra Santa Ynez that stand smiling at the 

 sea, and found my way out into the country, in search of the 

 most beautiful olive grove in California, where the padre 

 told me olive oil was made, each drop of which was like 

 amber, the nectar of the gods. 



I rode on up near the mountains, along fine groves of trees, 

 the blue ocean always in sight, the islands of Santa Cruz and 

 Santa Rosa resting in the water off shore, and came out at 

 Elwood with its splendid groups of eucalpytus and oak backed 

 up against the hills. In all probability this is the most pic- 

 turesque and attractive olive orchard in Southern California 

 — certainly one of the oldest of the modern ones, dating back 

 as it does to 1870. The orchard is the result of much 

 experimenting. It was found that olives could be raised more 

 quickly from clippings than from seeds. In four years Mr. 

 Elwood Cooper produced a crop from his clippings. To 

 plant seeds would have taken twice as long. 



The olive seems to thrive here in any soil as the big ranch 

 has all kinds and conditions from heavy adobe to sand, the 

 higher ele\ ations evidently being the most favorable, but not 

 over 3,000 feet. The trees which form the splendid grove of 

 Mr. Cooper came from the old Missions of San Diego, San 

 Fernando and Santa Barbara, and the view up the long street 

 or avenue in his orchard, lined on either side by hundreds of 

 olive trees, is one of the interesting things in California. 



It has been found here that a regular, even temperature 

 is best suited to the olive, and the situation of Santa Barbara 

 with Its splendid climate, about the same the year around, is 



A View of a California Olive Ranch 



