Hi. My name is Ranger Michelle. I work here at Rancho Peñasquitos Adobe. I'd
like to show you around our ranch house. One of the most significant things about
this building is that it is the second oldest residence in all of San Diego
County. Now, we didn't initially know that until restoration work began on this
wing of the building when we lifted these floorboards this olive jar was
discovered. Prior to that discovery, they thought that this ranch house was
probably dated around 1860, and now we know that it was 1823. Another really
interesting feature of this portion of the ranch house are the branding irons
over here. This is actually a working cattle ranch pretty much since the first
resident lived here in 1823, maybe even before that. And your cattle would just
be grazing throughout the canyon so you would need to brand them so that you
could recognize which cattle were yours when it was time to round them up. This
tool right here is called a running iron. It was discovered in one of the wells on
the property here. Now the reason it ended up in the well is you did not want
to be caught with a running iron. It is the tool of cattle thieves. They could
easily change the "C" on this brand to an "O" and then take off with that cattle.
So, this you did not want to be caught red-handed with this that's how it ended
up in the well. So the next portion of the tour we're going to go into the wing
where we recreated what life was like between the 1860s and 1880's
when the Johnson's lived here.
George Johnson was a very wealthy man from New
York, who came to this part of the country during the gold rush where he
then met Estefana, a California woman. One of the interesting things about the
ranch house here during the Californial period was you find a bed in most of the
rooms. They initially thought that's because this was a hotel, but that's not
part of Californial culture. Estefana was a very gracious host and she had the
financial means to put people up, to provide them with food and drink. So any
travelers that came through this area were graciously welcomed and could stay
for extended periods as a guest of Estefana. The next room that we're gonna go
into, actually deals a little bit more with family life.
I really like a lot of
the antiques that we have in this room. This for instance is something that you
don't see very often. It served as both the highchair for the baby and it could
also be altered into the stroller. How cool is that. Another interesting thing I
want to point out over here on the mantle, we have two dolls. It may look
like three. Which one of these is not a doll? It's actually this one right here.
This is actually a seamstress model for designing dresses because you couldn't
just go down to the store and buy a dress at this time period. All the
clothing had to be made for people. So the seamstress would design a dress and
work with the with the woman who was buying it on this model and then she
would actually create the dress, use the fabric on a on a sewing machine quite
like this one right here. By the way, one of the interesting things about these
oil lamps over here is that while most of the antiques
that we have here in the ranch house were donated from different families in
the area, these actually came from the time period. These lamps were found, I
believe, in the barn and have been here throughout all that time in history
The next room we're going to visit is actually more of an entertaining parlor.
If you can imagine traveling to California in the 1800s, it was quite a
journey, You would have to take a ship from the east coast down around the tip
of South America until you arrived in San Diego Harbor. This is a luxury piece
of luggage and it indicates the wealth that a family like the Johnsons might
have had because of the Round Top. So, when you got, after that long journey,
when you got to port, you wanted to be able to get off that boat as soon as
possible and get on your way. So, having the rounded top on here meant that
your luggage got unloaded first and you could get on to the next segment of your
journey. And, so if you were traveling, say to Los Peñasquitos or at least
stopping here at the Rancho along the way, you would be again hosted by the
Johnsons. Estefana would likely have done, uh, had entertainment in this parlor
here. We do have a piano from that time period. It actually does work, although
it's not in tune. But one of the interesting things about this is that in
an age where you did not have electricity you used candle light. So this
was both to see your keys and to be able to read your music. It's really fun to
imagine someone playing by candlelight here and and just entertaining all their
guests. How different of a time it was. The next room we're gonna go into is
called the Cowboy Room and you'll see why.
Here we are in the cowboy room. This was an actual working cattle ranch all the
way up until 1969, and some of the features in here that I'd like to share
with you include this rope bed. Although this is much earlier, this was around the
mid 1800's that you would make use of a bed like this. You couldn't go to
Jerome's and buy a mattress but you could use old lumber to construct the
bed and you could use a rope to make a nice mattress rather than sleeping on
the floor. And if you've ever heard the term "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs
bite", that comes from this style of bed. If you didn't want your rope bed to end
up feeling more like a hammock, you would actually have to use this tool and
tighten up all of your rope till you got up to your knot and then you would
retighten that knot. Hence the term "sleep tight". That's where it comes from. Also, in
the cowboy room we have this armoire. And this is pretty interesting because when
California became a part of the United States of America, the federal government
started imposing taxes on the property and each closet would have been taxed as
a room. So this was a way to get around that. It's a piece of furniture. It's not
a closet. Didn't have to pay taxes there. I'd also like to show you, in this case,
we have the chaps that were worn by one of the last cowboys that actually worked
this ranch. These are actually fancier chaps than you would have worn for
day-to-day work. It was more of your parade chaps, shall we say.
And, we're gonna go now to the front entrance to the Adobe, where you can
imagine Estefana gazing out watching as her guests came up from San Diego.
If you can imagine back in the day, this is the very porch
where Estefana would have been either seeing visitors off to San Diego or
watching them arrive to come and stay at the Adobe. Today it's still a beautiful
place to come and relax enjoy the scenery and feel that sense of going
back in time. So I'd like to thank you for taking a tour with me today of
Rancho Peñasquitos Adobe. If you'd like to learn more about this park or many of
our other county parks please visit us at sparks.org.