Shadelands Ranch

 

                                                        

 

A site on the National Register of Historic Places, the Shadelands Ranch Museum, is a time capsule of turn-of-the 20th century Walnut Creek and within a mile of Northgate. Built in 1903, the museum was originally the ranch home of Hiram Penniman, an early Walnut Creek pioneer, who eventually owned some 500 acres of fruit and nut orchards in the Ygnacio Valley.

 

Penniman built the large redwood-framed Colonial Revival house for his daughter, Mary, who managed the ranch after her father died in 1897.  Shadelands Ranch continued as a working ranch – its most profitable crop was prunes -- until 1948. For the next 20 years, the house was used, at least in part, to house or assist disabled persons and others in need. In 1970, the home and 2.67 acres of the land was donated to the City of Walnut Creek for the purpose of preserving and interpreting local history. The house and grounds, located at 2660 Ygnacio Valley Road, were opened to the public as the Shadelands Ranch Historical Museum in 1972.  

 

The Penniman home and architecture is typical of Colonial Revival design, a style characteristic of the early 1900s that blended diverse styles and was intended to suggest convenience, gracious living, and artistic effect. The columns on the large, wrap-around porch are representative of that style, as is the gazebo on the grounds. Other Revival design details include the weathered, handcrafted shingle roof, the hand-hewn front door of golden oak, the newel post staircase, and the clinker-brick fireplaces. The house contains many original family furnishings and treatments, including a hand-crank Stella music box/record player and Victorian-era silver, glassware and china. The bed in the master bedroom was brought by Penniman across the country from New York.

 

In normal years, the museum hosts a Pumpkin Patch in October and a popular crafts fair and Holiday Victorian Tea in December. Although the museum is presently closed, the grounds are open. For more information, contact the Walnut Creek Historical Society at (925) 935-7871.

 

Hiram Penniman, a native of New York, moved to California  with his brother-in-law in the early 1850s. They landed in Oakland, but soon set out for the “wilderness” of what was then called “The Corners” and is now Walnut Creek. They were looking for land. Their first orchard was around 350 acres.

 

Three years later, Penniman purchased 500 acres of Ygnacio Valley land from Encarnación Pacheco, the Hiram Penniman with Bessie Johnson Penniman, Carrie Penniman and Helen Hall, 1906. WC Historical Society photo daughter of Juana Sanchez de Pacheco, who was granted most of the land in the valley when it was part of Mexico. 

 

He is credited for, among other things, creating the first map of Walnut Creek.

 

Penniman and his wife raised four children, two sons and two daughters. Penniman is said to have built the large redwood-framed Colonial Revival house “to provide for the future security of his unmarried daughter, Mary.”  What often isn’t said is that Penniman lived in the house with Mary. Mary helped manage the orchards with her father and took them over after his death. Mary died of influenza in 1909, at a relatively young age. The property then passed to Penniman’s other daughter, Bessalina, the baby of the family. She was called Bessie.

 

Bessie was one of 150 freshmen in the first entering class at Stanford University in 1892. Future president Herbert Hoover was a classmate. After two years at Stanford, during which she fell in love with a fellow student not deemed appropriate by her parents, she transferred to Cornell University in New York. There she met Albert M. Johnson, the son of a wealthy Ohio banker and financier, who was studying engineering. They were married in 1896 at Shadelands Ranch but moved to Ohio to live.

 

Albert began working for and investing in mining operations and was quite successful. Less than two years after they were married, however, Albert and his father were involved in a terrible train accident while traveling through Utah and Colorado looking for mining opportunities. Albert’s father died instantly. Albert’s back was severely broken and was bedridden for 18 months. The injury left him with a chronic medical condition that prevented him from continuing the rugged travel required to oversee mining operations.

 

They moved to Chicago and Albert’s career pivoted to investment finance. One of his first investments was a very successful insurance company started with family friend E.A. Shedd (for whom Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is named).

 

Years later, Albert and Shedd invested in an alleged gold mine located in Death Valley, California, that was being peddled around Chicago by a man named Walter Scott, known as “Scotty.” Although Albert (and all the other investors) lost their money, Albert continued to invest because he liked Scotty and, most likely, still felt a pull toward mining.

 

Bessie was deeply involved in what was then called the Chicago Business Women’s Alliance, which provided social services for single working women, including prostitutes. She was a religious person and committed to social welfare work while they lived there.

 

After several years of sinking thousands of dollars into Scotty’s gold mine, Albert decided to travel to Death Valley to see it himself. It was a grueling trek by horseback and they never made it.  It’s said that Scotty thought the desert would be too much for the sickly city slicker. Not so.  Albert fell in love with the valley and the hot, dry climate.  He never saw the mine and to all other eyes was being swindled, but he and Scotty entered into a lifelong friendship. 

 

Albert started spending months at a time in Death Valley, where Bessie would occasionally visit but there was no place to stay.  In 1914, Bessie converted to evangelical Christianity in a church led by a popular Chicago preacher named Paul Radar. Albert eventually bought Rader a house near theirs in Chicago and provided Rader with a stipend to defray church costs. Albert also eventually joined the church. Bessie hosted her own religious radio show.

 

Albert began looking for a ranch in Death Valley so Bessie could come to stay longer. He was told about the Steinenger Ranch, located in what is now Death Valley National Park. He bought the ranch and he and Bessie added on to the house for a number of years.

 

They moved to Death Valley and Bessie turned to preaching, particularly to the construction workers working on their ranch. It was said her sermons could last more than two hours (described by one as “a torment”).  She wore white and red robes with a tiara, styling herself after Aimee Semple McPherson, who was very popular at the time.

 

Bessie died in a car accident in Death Valley in 1943.  Although she inherited the Shadelands Ranch, she and Albert never lived there. She hired a manager to keep it running.  Albert’s health worsened and he died of cancer in 1948. 

 

Before his death, he put the Shadelands Ranch in Walnut Creek and the Steinenger Ranch in Death Valley in a non-profit he formed called the Gospel Foundation, with the provision that both properties eventually be gifted to Walnut Creek and the Death Valley National Park Service.  Although it was never put in writing, Walter Scott claimed Albert promised him he could live in the Steinenger Ranch for the rest of his life.  He became so associated with the property that it has become known as Scotty’s Castle.

 

-        Information and photos courtesy of the Walnut Creek Historical Society; the National Park Service (Death Valley); SpaudlingConcrete.com/shadelands-ranch-museum-walnut-creek/