jack london's beauty ranch

A few weekends ago, I got to visit Jack London's Beauty Ranch in Sonoma.

This is where his ashes are buried. He was laid to rest on the same hill that is the gravesite of the children of the Greenlaw family, who lived there in 1870. The giant stone comes from the Wolf House.

 His piece The Valley of the Moon was inspired by this land.

His beauty ranch consists of 1,400 acres that housed his cottage, the winery ruins, silos, barns, the pig palace, the smoke house, the Wolf House, and the house his wife lived in after his death.

According to the blueprints, the Wolf House was going to be 3 stories, with 26 rooms and 9 fireplaces. Among these rooms were a stag party room, a manuscript vault, a gun and trophy room, a music alcove, a reflection pool, refrigerating and vacuum cleaning plants, and a special sleeping tower just for him.

Worried about earthquakes, Jack London hired Albert Farr to design a structure that would last a thousand years. Unfortunately, one month before the Londons were about to move in, the Wolf House caught fire. London always meant to rebuild it, but never got around to it due to his poor health. He died three years later. All that remains are these stone ruins.

London built the first concrete silo in California. 

I bought a copy of The Sea-Wolf in the London house and learned about the time the Londons sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii. It turns out that neither London nor the navigator they hired had any navigational training. The navigator had never even been to deep sea before that voyage started. They decided the best course of action was to just read a lot and figure out how to do it all in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This caused their trip to run late and they were presumed to be lost at sea when The Snark failed to show up to Hawaii on schedule.

"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."

much love,
hedgie