The gold seekers that flooded San Francisco in the mid-1800s were in short supply of just about everything—including fresh milk and butter.
The nearby grasslands of the Point Reyes Peninsula, which the Coast Miwok had tended for centuries before the Spanish pushed them out to raise their own livestock in the late 1700s, provided ample opportunity for ambitious miners hoping to fill the empty market.
The success of those dairy farmers and their descendants, who managed to adapt to changing regulations and stay at the forefront of the industry as far as production, quality and sustainability over the past 150 years, recently won special recognition nationwide.
After decades of working on the proposals, the National Park Service this month successfully listed the ranchlands on the National Register of Historic Places, a list of the places that the park service prioritizes for preservation.
Classified as a “rural historic district,” the Point Reyes Peninsula Dairy Ranches includes 22,000 acres that encompasses 17 working ranches in the seashore’s boundaries. In April, the park listed another 14,000 acres that includes 19 ranches between Point Reyes Station and Bolinas as the Olema Valley Dairy Ranches.
Deeming the period of significance for both districts as 1856 to 1958, the park has described the ranches as representative of the evolution in dairying from original wood-frame milking barns to the concrete Grade A sanitary barns of the 1940s.
Gordon White, previously the seashore’s chief of integrated resource management, told the Light in January that he anticipated that the listing would not change the park’s approach as landlords. “A listing doesn’t change too much, since we’ve already been treating these buildings as historic. It just formalizes a management scheme that we’ve been doing for over 20 years,” he said.
The park has followed the standards defined by the Secretary of the Interior in the 1995 “Treatment of Historic Properties,” which includes guidelines for preservation, rehabilitation, restoration and reconstruction for both eligible properties and those listed in the register. (The California State Preservation Office affirmed that the Point Reyes ranches were eligible in the early ‘90s.)
Nevertheless, the timing is notable. The districts overlap with the area under consideration in the park’s general management plan amendment process, which zeros in on ranching operations and could result in drastic changes in management, including eliminating or reducing the number of historic ranches.
Could this change the outcome of that process? According to a historian for the register, Paul Lusignan, once a district is listed in the register, the land management agency—in this case, the park service—is not obligated to preserve the area exactly as it is.
For instance, if a ranching family on Point Reyes were forced to move out of their home, the park could preserve the integrity of the historic structure but repurpose its use for, say, a visitor center. If cattle were taken off historically grazed land, the park could maintain the grasslands with mowers.
According to local historian Dewey Livingston, however, the listings will make an impact by validating the ranches’ historical legacy.
Almost 30 years ago, Mr. Livingston, then a historical technician for the seashore, defined the boundaries of an area within the park that he thought might be eligible for the register and did much of the early work to prepare the
application.
“In this case, the understanding of history can help promote a longer-lasting presence of the people and activities that are part of that history,” said Mr. Livingston, now an independent historian writing a comprehensive history of the Point Reyes Peninsula and Tomales Bay watershed. “Technically and legally, it has stronger protection as a federal property instead of a private property, like most listings. These are the teeth: with a federal agency, they either have to preserve it or go through a compliance process if they are going to change things or destroy them.”
The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties. It also established an independent advisory council responsible for enforcing the act. That council is allowed “a reasonable opportunity to comment” on new projects, which must also “involve the public and identify potential consulting parties,” the act states.
“That level of bureaucracy at least helps it to be preserved for some length of time,” Mr. Livingston said. “What might be at issue here, however, is that the designation does not necessarily protect long-term uses. It doesn’t mean the cows will stay grazing, or the people have to stay in the houses.”
In 1850, dairy farmers produced just 750 pounds of butter and 150 pounds of cheese in the entire state of California, according to Mr. Livingston’s 2009 book, “Discovering Historic Ranches at Point Reyes.” Two decades later, some 3,600 milking cows on the Point Reyes Peninsula were part of the “largest dairy estate in the world,” he wrote. The owners, the Shafter family, leased much of the land, which they named by the letters of the alphabet that persist today.
Though many ranches now raise beef cattle, there are still six dairies, all certified organic, that supply milk to successful businesses such as Straus Family Creamery and Clover Sonoma.