— Articles Section —
Located in the Castaic/Piru area of Southern California
The Hathaway Ranch Museum and its founders, Richard F. (Dick) and Nadine Hathaway, were dedicated to researching and preserving the history of the Santa Gertrudes Land Grant area. This, of course, included the history of the Hathaway family, and in particular the Hathaway Ranch from its inception in 1905 up through the present, with the major interest centering around the 1920-1950 era. Jesse Hathaway, who's major interest was in farming and ranching, had passed away in 1960, and by the early 1980s Dick Hathaway, who had enthusiastically carried on the cattle operations on the Hathaway Temescal after Jesse Hathaway's death, was no longer able to make the long daily journey to the Temescal Ranch. Consequently, any major ranching operations were becoming a thing of the past and no longer were a dominant inter-family activity.
 |
Hathaway Rancho Temescal main gate This area was devastated when the
roadway |
Although the Hathaway Ranch Museum's focus is on the Santa Fe Springs area, the Hathaway family business activities were not limited to it. Quite the contrary, the Hathaway (Oil) Company, for instance, was active over many western states. Likewise, the Hathaway Ranch Company extended its reach, too, and so the following history of the Hathaway Rancho Temescal will be of interest because it compliments the Hathaway story by providing a more complete picture.
The Hathaway Rancho Temescal was purchased by the Hathaway Family in 1938 as an adjunct to the busy and well established Santa Fe Springs cattle feed-lot operation. The idea was to raise yearling cattle on the Temescal Ranch and then when they were mature they would be trucked to the Santa Fe Springs feed-lot, whereupon they would be fattened and "finished off" for market using specially formulated nutrient rich feeds. Ironically, it was the dust and air-borne particulate matter resulting from the Hathaway Ranch's knowledge and expertise in feed grinding and blending that was to ultimately doom and bring about the complete cessation of any cattle operations on the Hathaway Ranch in Santa Fe Springs. However, the raising of cattle did continue after the closure of the cattle feed-lot operation, but was now confined to the property that was earlier on only an adjunct to the vigorous Santa Fe Springs based operation.
Located in what is now Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, California, the Temescal Land Grant consisted of three leagues, or about 13,339 aces of land northeast of Piru and southwest of Castaic, California. Laying in the Angeles National Forest and adjacent to the Los Padres National Forest the 6,100 acres making up the Hathaway Ranch portion of the original Temescal Land Grant, which lies entirely in Los Angeles County, consists of rugged chemise and sage covered terrain with long; fairly steep, rolling hillsides having a generally southern exposure. Secluded Oak studded canyons abound, punctuating the steep cliffs and narrow ravines. The land abounds with wildlife, including an occasional bear, mountain lion or bobcat. Deer graze openly throughout the area; coyotes fill the chilled night air with their song and quail feed in the barnyard and sing their lonesome cry, while woodpeckers, with their nearly constant tap, tap, tap, bore holes in the old wooden buildings and poke them full of precious acorns.
It is thought that a prehistoric population occupied the Castaic area about 26,000 years ago. These early inhabitants were big game hunters and gatherers who were displaced by the arrival of Shoshonean speaking peoples from the Great Plains about 500 A.D. The coastal Chumash tribe that inhabited much of the Castaic area, referred to these people as Allildik, which translates into “grunters.” The Kitanemuk tribe of Antelope Valley called them Tataviam, which translates as "the people of the sunny slopes." The word Castaic is a corruption of the Chumash-word "Kashtuk, which means "our eyes." The Spanish spelled it Castac, and then later the Americans changed it to Castaic, which it remains to this day.
Of course, there was a time when the Rancho Temescal in name did not exist. So, how did it come into being? The word Temescal is Spanish for "sweat bath" or "sweat lodge," as anyone who has lived on the Temescal land through the hot dry summer months can well attest, when temperatures can often soar to 110 degrees and higher. In sharp contrast, however, the winters can be quite frigid, with a mantle of frost decorating the landscape in the mornings. This cooler season is also the wet time of the year, offsetting the summer heat with the beautiful sight of rolling hills bright with fresh green grass. Then, soon after, in the springtime, the hills glow in the gentle embrace of varied and colorful wildflowers.
The original block of land known as Rancho Temescal came about by way of a Spanish Land Grant made to Ramon de la Cuesta and Francisco Gonzales Camino in 1843. This original Land Grant, was later Patented to Ramon de la Cuesta and Francisco Gonzales Camino on September 13, 1871. The Don Antonio Del Valle family, who already owned the San Francisco Land Grant, acquired the Temescal land sometime after it was Patented. The nearby San Francisco Land Grant of some 48,611 acres was given to Don Antonio Del Valle in 1839, who was a lieutenant in the Spanish Army and who had left Mexico and come to California in 1825. His son Don Ygnacio had come with him. Their first ranch house was located near Castaic. Then, in 1853, they began construction of a four-room house at Camulos, not far from where the little town of Piru sits today.
Prior to 1861, Don Ygnacio spent most of his time at the pueblo of Los Angeles, where he was quite prominent in civic affairs and held many public offices. In 1861, however, he moved to Camulos whereupon he enlarged the house and resided there with his family until his death in 1880. The Del Valles were a very prominent family in the valley and known for having the greatest variety of fruits, vineyards and flowers of any Spanish home in California. During the 1870s and 1880s Camulos had acres and acres of citrus, vineyards and olives; and there were also plantings of chestnuts, walnuts, almonds, figs, apricots, apples, pears, peaches, quinces, persimmons and pomegranates. On the Temescal section of the estate, there were tropical plants, citrus, apricots, olives and English walnuts. The heirs of Don Ygnacio sold off some parcels of the estate; the Newhall Ranch and the Temescal being two of the parcels sold by the three brothers.
Ulpiano F. Del Valle and two of his brothers sold the Temescal to David C. Cook in 1887. Mr. Cook, from Elgin, Illinois, was a publisher and manufacturer of Sunday school supplies who came to California because of his ill health. He bought the thirteen thousand and some odd acres of the Rancho Temescal as well as other properties consisting of two thousand acres and started the construction of a virtual Garden of Eden. His plans included a town site (Piru) as well as acres and acres of fruit trees and groves, thereby attempting to duplicate those of the Holy Land in Biblical times. The name of the town site, Piru (or Piru City), was derived from the Indian word for the grass or reeds that grew along the creek that flowed down the canyon and through town.
The first site chosen for the town was on the south side of the mouth of Piru Creek in Piru Canyon; and it was there that Cook built his first house, stables, shop and bunkhouse. But his plans were somewhat stymied as the Southern Pacific Railroad refused to run a spur line up Piru Canyon, so Cook moved the town site to its present location below the base of the mountains, where Piru Creek and the Santa Clara River meet. A railroad station already existed at Camulos a few miles away, and the Southern Pacific refused to support another depot and agent so close together. So David Cook took on the responsibility of building the first depot and paying the salary of the agent himself.
The Rancho contained extensive fruit orchards, which extended westward from the little town of Piru City, for about two miles and then a distance of about six miles up Piru Canyon. The Rancho was divided into five subdivisions; the first one, the Piru or Home division took in the town and the orchards to the west. Then the subdivisions ran in order up Piru Carryon as follows: Esmeralda, Temescal, Calara and Esperanza. Each area had its own foreman and houses were erected for the workers.
Along with the purchase of the land came the irrigation right to use the water out of the Piru River. The irrigation system had been planned to accommodate all five of the subdivisions and would encompass a distance of approximately eight miles in length. The system consisted of thirty miles of pipeline, flumes and canals and irrigated about twelve hundred acres. Another network of small pipes supplied water to Piru for domestic use.
There were also extensive fruit drying yards with pitting and cutting sheds. At one time five hundred workers handled fifty tons of green fruit daily. Sulphur houses were used to give the fruit color and destroy any insects. Cook also raised cattle and horses and beans, barley, alfalfa and honey on his ranch, all adding to the business prosperity of Piru City, which was nicknamed "Apricot Town." The post office is still there along with the Church and two general stores that now provide snacks, drinks, fishing supplies and miscellaneous items for the tourists heading up Piru Canyon to the Santa Felicia Dam and recreation area.
The first gold to be mined in California was actually on the Temescal, not at Sutter's Mill, like most history books like to suggest. There seems to have been a dispute between upper and lower California as to where the first gold was discovered in the state. Nonetheless, as early as 1810 gold was being mined from the upper end of the Rancho Temescal in Canyon San Feliciano by the Mexicans and Indians. Extensive mining occurred from 1810 through the 1850s, and then again during the 1870s through the 1890s, when it seems that David Cook took a hand in the mining operations.
According to an article in an 1899 issue of the Ventura Free Press, Jose Bermudes and Francisco Lopez supervised the Mission Indians in mining operations that worked gravel deposits in the Santa Feliciano Canyon. The mining paid off considerably by 1842, and by 1854 some $65,000 in gold was taken in one season by Francisco Garcia. One nugget found at the junction of Sheep Creek and Palomas Canyon was valued at nineteen hundred dollars.
In 1846 the Ayuntamiento of the Pueblo appointed Francisco Garcia as sub-perfect of the camp; he was the official commissioner to gather information in regards to mining camp operations and regulations. During this time, a common laborer at the camp could earn two dollars per day.
Most of the mining was of the placer type, but this was seasonal because of the lack of water during the hot summer months or the dry season of the year. After the mid 1850s there seems to have been a partial exhaustion and abandonment of the placer mining. Then in the 1870s, the existence of quartz lodes was recognized and a revival of the camp commenced that would run for another three decades. In addition to the placer mining, some hydraulic mining was done between 1875 and 1895. Two water wells were drilled at the far upper end of the canyon, located in one of the little canyon offshoots, with the precious water piped to a reservoir on top of the mountain, where enough could be accumulated overnight to allow for two hours of hydraulic operations the next day.
What is today called Mines Canyon is so named because of all the exploration and mining done there. There were twelve mines in operation at one time. One of the mines actually tunneled through the mountain. Some of the shafts were timbered and offshoot tunnels are said to have honeycombed the mountains on both sides of Mines Canyon. The entrances to the various mines have all caved in, as have most of the mine shafts. Up until the 1960s, one tunnel was still open enough so that a person could easily enter and walk a short ways into the mine shaft. It was extremely dark and musty smelling, the floor scattered with debris, but nonetheless exciting to venture into and get a sense of a bit of the past. And although the large timbers looked to be strong and fairly new, they were actually a hundred years old. From one air-vent shaft, tunneled vertically from the main tunnel, it was possible to look upwards and see a point of daylight, but other than this, inside the mine it was total darkness throughout.
David Cook, it would appear, is the person responsible for bringing in a large group of Chinese Coolies, who did the actual mining work during and/or after 1887. The Chinese workforces had just finished up work on the Newhall Railroad Tunnel, and were in turn employed to work the placer mines before returning to San Francisco. The Chinese workers were housed in Mines Canyon, where remnants of the stone foundations for their small houses still remain, if one knows where to look. The oak and sycamore studded canyon holds a wonderful and mysterious quality to this day, and at times the presence of the many Chinese Coolies can still be felt.
David C. Cook enjoyed his Garden of Eden for fifteen-years. Then, after regaining his health, he returned to Elgin, Illinois, and resumed his position as head of the publishing company. With the selling of his vast land interests came the end of an era. The Temescal Land Grant, as well as other large tracts of land, were divided into smaller sections and sold. The Piru Oil and Land Company is reportedly the fourth owner of the Temescal Grant, purchasing it around 1902. This is the company that probably drilled the one shallow oil well in the area now known as Oil Well Flats, an area where several small natural oil seeps are plainly evident. Then about 1915 to 1917, Edward Laurence Doheny purchased the Rancho Temescal.
Edward Laurence Doheny was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on August 10, 1856. As a young man he spent a good many years on the frontier prospecting and developing mines. In 1892, at the age of thirty-six, Edward Doheny arrived in Los Angeles with his partner, Charles Canfield, and the two men discovered oil near the corner of Second and Glendale Boulevard, near downtown Los Angeles. This single discovery made both men rich, and by 1900-they were both making a profit of half a million dollars. Their discovery sparked an oil rush in the city that would produce the drilling of twenty-three hundred new wells and the extraction of seventy-five million barrels of crude. In May of 1900, by way of a private railroad car and attended to by a porter and a chef, Doheny and Canfield went to Mexico on yet another prospecting trip. They ended up buying four-hundred thousand acres of land in the vicinity of Tampico. They formed the Mexican Petroleum Company and during the next nine years the two men extracted eighty million barrels of crude from their Mexican holdings.
The Dohenys also owned a four-hundred acre working ranch in Beverly Hills, which was purchased in 1912. Other acquisitions followed; three other ranches were purchased within the next few yeas: the Los Alamos Rancho above Santa Barbara, the Rancho Temescal at Piru and Castaic, and the Ferndale Ranch at Santa Paula. The Temescal Land Grant was reportedly purchased for the sum of one dollar per acre. All of the ranches were in Ventura County except for a 6100 acre portion of the Temescal that lay in Los Angeles County.
Canyon Diablo on the Temescal's westerly border was used by Doheny to test some of the equipment manufactured by his Petroleum Securities Corporation. It is believed that Doheny bought the Temescal because of the oil being there, and in subsequent years many wells have been drilled on the Ventura County portion of the ranch. Doheny also drilled some test wells on the Los Angeles County part of the ranch, and raised cattle and horses on it. The main Temescal ranch headquarters were located just a few miles above Piru in Piru Canyon, but Doheny built a second cattle camp on the Los Angeles County portion of the ranch at the confluence of Santa Felicia Canyon and Oak Canyon. The long rambling bungalow, built in the early 1900s, still stands today. It is said that Doheny often entertained hunting guests at the Temescal Cattle Camp No. 2. A large red barn with hay storage and several box stalls for horses, along with working corrals, were also built at the same time.
Not long after Mr. Doheny died on September 8, 1935, the Rancho Temescal was put up for sale, in order to pay inheritance taxes. By coincidence, a Mr. Anderson, who worked for Doheny’s Petroleum Securities Corporation, and who was also a friend of Jesse E. Hathaway, of Santa Fe Springs, California, mentioned the upcoming sale of the Temescal and other properties to Jesse and Lola Hathaway. Looking for a ranch to buy, Jesse and Lola visited all four of the Doheny ranches, and liking the Temescal ranch best they had their three sons inspect the Temescal property, too. In about a week's time the Los Angeles County portion of the Temescal had new owners. The Hathaway family had been considering the purchase of the King Ranch in Brea, California, which is now a very large and famous subdivision called Diamond Bar, but once they saw the Temescal the family knew that this was the property they wanted.
 |
Branding cattle on the Hathaway Rancho Temescal, |
On November 26, 1938, Lucy Smith Doheny Battson, the widow of Edward Doheny’s son, sold the Los Angeles County portion of the Temescal to Jesse and Lola Hathaway, along with their three sons and their wives: Elwood and Anna Hathaway, Richard and Nadine Hathaway, and Julian and Helen Hathaway. Initially, the only viable way into the Hathaway Temescal was by means of a bumpy and very rutted dirt road leading northeast out of Piru. Traveling up the long canyon toward what is now the Santa Felicia Recreation Area, the rutted trail led across Piru Creek and then into the mouth of Canyon San Feliciano, now known as Santa Felicia Canyon, at a point where the Ventura County and Los Angels County lines meet. The county line is the western boundary of the Hathaway Temescal.
The Cattle Camp (originally Rancho Temescal cattle camp #2) lies in the southwestern corner of the ranch at the confluence of Oak Canyon where it meets Santa Felicia Canyon. The valley is fairly wide at this juncture and is filled with giant old oak and sycamore trees. A creek trickles down Oak Canyon most of the year and merges with Santa Felicia, whereupon to the eye the creek is dry, but some water runs under the sandy surface most of the year. The main ranch house and barn were built in the early 1900s, and stand just a short distance from the banks of the combined Oak Canyon and Santa Felicia Canyon creek bed. The working cattle corrals made of whitewashed wood rails and fence run along several hundred feet of the Oak Canyon creek.
 |
Hathaway Rancho Temescal, Cattle Camp No.2 |
The rooms in the old house were large and spacious, with high ceilings and batting on the walls. A roomy screen porch ran the length of it. The center piece of the living room was a massive rock fireplace made with rocks found nearby on the ranch. Off of the main living room were two bedrooms and two smaller rooms, and a large kitchen with a long window over the drain board that looked out across the river bed into the mountains. When new the house had kerosene lights, but later, after the Hathaway family took over operations, a large butane storage tank was installed, supplying gas for a water heater, cook stove, refrigerator and two gas lighting fixtures, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Then, sometime in the late 1950s an electric line was run into the ranch headquarters and the house and out buildings were modernized to a point. But much of the original rusticness of the setting remained untouched.
Another way of getting into the Temescal ranch, although very primitive and treacherous at the time, was from Hasley Canyon, by going through the Gilmour and Lechler Ranches. Since the early years a crude trail existed, which traversed a rather steep and precarious grade that swiftly descended into Oak Canyon. There was also a rough dirt road that wound its way from the Gilmour Ranch property into Arabian Canyon and then through to Oak Canyon. In 1939, Julian I. Hathaway bladed the crude trail leading down into Oak Canyon, turning it into a drivable, but steep, roadway, making access via the old trial possible. Getting as far as the Gilmour Ranch was easy, since Hasley Canyon Road was a paved roadway that ran from the Ridge Route, now Interstate Highway 5, up Hasley Canyon and dead ended at the Gilmour Ranch (the term Hasley is the corruption of a Tataviam Indian word, “Islay," which means berries). The remaining four miles of road into the Temescal were, and still are, private roadway, going over the Gilmour and Lechler Ranches. To help insure continued access via the Hasley Canyon and newly bladed “Forestry grade” route, the Hathaway family bought eighty acres on what is commonly called "the grade," and the road was put through to the upper end of Oak Canyon, where George Lechler's ranch was located. The twenty-nine percent grade going down the mountain was later paved to prevent devastating erosion, while at the bottom a sandy dirt road wound its way through Oak Canyon until it met the white board gate of the Hathaway's Rancho Temescal.
The first load of Hathaway cattle was unloaded at Piru Creek, a couple of miles below the ranch's westerly border, on January 14, 1939. They were driven, horseback, up the canyon to the cattle camp where they were corralled and later turned out on the range. There were several truck loads of Hereford steers delivered that day. To manage the ranch the Dohenys had employed a Mr. Morgan as foreman during the time they owned it, and Mr. Morgan stayed on at the Temescal for a short while after the Hathaways took over. Then Jack Pagan, a local man, was hired. He lived in the rambling ranch house at the cattle camp with his wife and five children. In April of 1939, Mr. Pagan somehow managed to drive several steers off a high bluff up Santa Felicia Canyon, whereupon shortly after, on April 23, he entertained a large group of friends at the cattle camp with a Barbeque. From that time onward this particular bluff and the mouth of the canyon below it were known as Dead Steer Canyon.
By August of 1939, Mr. Pagan and his family were gone. Julian and Helen Hathaway, along with their infant son, Terry, lived at the ranch, while Julian Hathaway and his father, Jesse Hathaway, drilled some water wells at a location known as Oil Well Flats, which was far up Santa Felicia Canyon and towards the back end of the Temescal ranch. Everyday Helen Hathaway, taking along little Terry, would drive up the Santa Felicia Canyon, following the narrow, winding dirt road to take Julian his lunch. Jesse Hathaway would motorcar up to the Temescal each day from Santa Fe Springs and then return each night. The trip from the home ranch to the Temescal was a three hour drive, fighting traffic and winding through the streets of Los Angeles and San-Fernando, until reaching the foothills of the Grapevine. From this point on it was truly beautiful country -- green, wild and open.
 |
The old and rusted 1,000 barrel steel water tanks |
In October of 1939, two large thousand barrel tanks were installed at Oil Well Flats, just downhill from the newly drilled water wells. Some twenty-five tons of rock was hauled in for their foundation. Jesse Hathaway had planned out a unique water system for the ranch that was mostly gravity flow. Water was piped from springs at Mines Canyon at the far upper end of the ranch, and stored at Oil Well Flats. Along the way various water troughs were also filled from this pipeline. Then from the large Oil Well Flats accumulation tanks the water was piped down Santa Felicia Canyon almost all the way to the cattle camp, where several more water troughs were filled. At Dead Steer a windmill was installed that pumped water about three miles up to the top of a mountain and into another storage tank, referred to as the Yellow Tank. The pipeline from this high elevation tank watered all of the area known as Pigeon Flats and Rattlesnake Canyon. Another windmill was installed in the canyon bottom near another spring in Escondido Canyon. From this point water was pumped uphill a distance of about one mile to a silver storage tank, and from this tank the water gravity flowed back down to the various water troughs in Escondido and Long Canyons.
Originally there were five operating windmills pumping water to various storage tanks throughout the Hathaway Temescal, but as of 1992 only two of those windmills remained in service. Currently, no windmills remain in service; the “yellow mill” (so named because it was painted yellow) lost its fan during a terrible windstorm and the old wooden storage tank at the base of the Escondido canyon mill rotted out, leaving this windmill temporarily useless. At the high point in the ranch’s development there was some forty miles of water pipeline and close to eighty miles of cut service road on the Temescal, many of the roads originally bladed by Julian I. Hathaway, and latter on by Julian’s older brother, Richard (Dick) Hathaway.
The last load of cattle to be unloaded at Piru Creek and then driven up to the cattle camp was on February 10, 1940. Shortly thereafter, the Forestry Grade (an alternate route to and from Hasley Canyon Road) was paved by the Gulf Oil Company in return for being able to use it for their oil operations. This made the once treacherous grade into Oak Canyon safely navigable by all the residents of the canyon, and very importantly it also made it possible to easily get cattle trucks and other heavy equipment directly onto the Temescal. This made it feasible for yearling steers to be pastured on the Temescal, because they could easily be delivered and then later loaded back onto trucks right at the cattle camp, and then trucked up the Forestry grade and down to the Hathaway feedlot operation in Santa Fe Springs, where they could be finished off on a special ration until their weight averaged about twelve hundred pounds.
On June 2, 1940, six-hundred head of Hereford calves from the M.O. Means herd of Valentine, Texas, were bought through W.B. Mitchell & Son's, brokers in Marfa, Texas. The price paid was ten-cents per pound, but the calves were not shipped until November of that same year. Thus, they would not be the first cattle to travel over the new Forester grade. The F.O.B. freight charges (Southern Pacific Railroad) was $145.00 per car, or $1,740.00 for twelve railroad cars filled with calves. They averaged 357 pounds each upon delivery, and were hauled from the railroad head to the Temescal ranch via the Forestry grade on November 13, 1940, by Garibaldi Brothers Trucking for $31.00 a carload. The calves were branded and vaccinated November 16th and turned out on the range.
The first real test of the new Forester grade occurred on July 20, 1940, when the first large group of cattle trucks and trailers journeyed over the steep grade onto the Temescal. Within just two weeks time five truck loads and eight truck-and-trailer loads of cattle weighing 800 to 900 pounds each were hauled from the Temescal cattle camp, up the Forestry grade and down to the Hathaway feedlot operation in Santa Fe Springs for finishing.
By November of 1940 a new machine shop and garage building had been built, adding to the original ranch house, large hay barn and modest working corrals. Soon the old corrals were torn down and new ones constructed; the new corral fence had three-inch drill-pipe posts set in cement, each about eight feet apart, with the railings made of two-by-ten inch wood planks. The squeeze chute was made in Eagle's Nest, New Mexico and shipped to the ranch and installed by November 26, 1940.
In January of 1941 many of the ranch's rolling hillsides in Santa Felicia Canyon were brushed, the ground was disked up, and grass seed was planted. During these early Hathaway years the cattle were often fed, when necessary, with a team and wagon. In California the rains come in the fall, winter and spring. The growing season is during the winter and spring; by the end of April whatever grass is there is what remains to feed any livestock until the next winter, when hopefully the rains return again and replenish the grasslands.
 |
Hathaway Company drilling a well on the RAM |
In April of 1941 Julian Hathaway began drilling several oil wells on adjoining property; the three RAM wells and the Rose Ann well, all on the Lechler Ranch property. Elwood Hathaway, the oldest of Jesse and Lola Hathaway’s three sons, was part of the oil operation and built a crude corrugated metal bunkhouse behind the main ranch house, which was used by the oil field workers during the drilling of the oil wells on the Lechler ranch.
During the winter of 1943 heavy rains flooded most of the Piru and Temescal areas, bringing with them a torrent of water that caused a great deal of destruction. Adding to the problems, in February of that year an Army Transport plane crashed in Canton Canyon, also known as Mines Canyon, at the rugged upper far end of the Temescal ranch. Three men were killed outright, but three others survived.
Sometime during the period of 1944 - 1945, a neighbor, Bill Riley, who was married to Abigail Lechler, and who had been working in Santa Fe Springs for the Hathaway Oil Company since the early 1940s, was asked to work on the Hathaway Temescal Ranch. Bill and Abigail lived on and worked the Temescal for one or two years before Mr. Riley retired. Then, with no one living on and working the ranch, Jesse Hathaway and his son, Richard Hathaway, traveled to the Temescal from Santa Fe Springs on a daily basis, building roads and taking care of the cattle until 1958 --1959, when Jesse Hathaway became too ill to make the long journey anymore.
It was also about this same time, 1958 - 1959, when the newly incorporated City of Santa Fe Springs began to complain of the dust and whatever caused by the feedlot operation, so it was shut down and the Temescal Ranch operation was converted from yearling steers to mother cows. The first cows were Herefords, and then Black Angus was brought in, creating a crossbred mixture of Hereford - Angus (or Black Baldies, as they are often called). At one time the ranch supported between four to five hundred head of cows, but over the years it dropped to a fairly steady three hundred cow operation, with some room for replacement heifers, too.
During the early 1960s through 1984 some eight deep-test oil wells were drilled on the Hathaway Temescal, and although there were showings of oil and gas none of the wells proved to be of commercial value in the eyes of the drilling company, and so the wells were subsequently abandoned. Notably, one of the “oil” wells reportedly struck artesian water at a depth of maybe 2000 feet, thwarting the oil exploration drilling process. This one well was then offered to the Hathaway Ranch Company, but Richard Hathaway, who had no plans to ever develop the ranch beyond its current level of use, declined the offer, and so the oil prospect turned water was plugged and abandoned.
After Jesse Hathaway's passing on April 13, 1960, Richard (Dick) Hathaway continued on with the Temescal ranch activities, making the almost daily trip from Santa Fe Springs to carry out maintenance and feed the cattle. The ranch house (of early 1900 vintage) was now only occasionally used by family members and so it slowly deteriorated over the years, especially after enduring two major earthquakes. In the fall of 1973 Julian Hathaway’s youngest daughter, Kathy, and her husband, Don Weber, began restorations on the ranch house and moved in to live permanently on March 1, 1974, along with their two young sons, Andy and Mark. Kathy (Hathaway) Weber was the first Hathaway family member to actually live on the Temescal on a permanent basis.
A few months later the youngest daughter of Richard and Nadine Hathaway, Merrie Hathaway, married Val Ashton, and the two of them soon moved onto the Temescal ranch. They lived in a trailer house to the west and just out of sight of the ranch house. Kathy and Don Weber helped them out from time to time with the cattle, but Merrie and Val Ashton, along with Dick Hathaway, were in charge of the cattle operation on the Temescal ranch.
In April of 1976 Kathy and Don Weber moved to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, to take care of a ranch that Julian and Helen Hathaway had recently purchased. Merrie and Val continued to help Richard (Dick) Hathaway on the Temescal and gradually took over the operation for the most part as he became less and less able to do the work.
In June of 1983 the oldest of the three brothers, Elwood Hathaway, passed away and Julian and Richard (Dick) Hathaway each bought half of his interest in the Temescal ranch. Sometime after that Merrie and Val Ashton divorced. Merrie left the ranch, but Val Ashton stayed on and continued to help Richard (Dick) Hathaway until his death in June of 1986.
Because the cattle on the Temescal were owned jointly by Richard and Julian Hathaway at the time of Richard's death, Julian was left more or less in charge by default, since Richard Hathaway's wife, Nadine, did not want to have anything to do with a cattle operation. Thus, Julian Hathaway asked his daughter, Kathy Weber, if she and her husband wanted to return to the Temescal and take over the cattle operations. Kathy and Don Weber, along with their youngest son, Mark, drove back out to study the situation and make their decision. The ranch was very run down and needed a lot of effort to make if functional again, but they decided to take on the task. The Webers would now be ranching in two states about 900 miles apart.
The interest in the cattle belonging to Nadine Hathaway were purchased making Kathy and Don Weber partners on the cattle with Kathy's parents, Julian and Helen Hathaway, and the Hathaway Temescal Ranch Company was formed. Kathy and Don hired a caretaker to stay on the ranch and maintain the fences and water lines, which needed constant attention, while Kathy and Don commuted back and forth between the two ranches whenever their presence was prudent or necessary. It usually required three to four trips a year spending two weeks to a month at a time working on the Temescal. It took about two years to get all the boundary fences back up in good shape, and then they worked on some of the interior fences. During this time their son, Mark, who was only eleven years old, worked on opening up many of the ranch's approximately 60 miles of roads that were no longer passable, and did so using a Caterpillar D4 dozer and a worn out motor grader.
During the first two years, the care taker and his family lived in the main ranch house and the Webers lived in a small travel trailer just west of the house. When the refrigerator quit in the trailer house they began taking meals in the main house and sharing the cooking and clean up duties. It was not until April of 1988, when the old corrugated metal bunkhouse (originally built by Elwood Hathaway to house the Hathaway Company's oil drilling crew working on the nearby Lechler Ranch) was remodeled to make it livable, and Kathy, Don, and Mark Weber moved in. It was still a shack, but it was also now a home. By August of that year there were twenty-seven working water troughs on the Temescal, each capable of holding eight-hundred gallons of water, and each equipped with an automatic float valve.
 |
Kathy and Don Weber rounding up cattle on |
In the fall of 1989 the caretaker left and Kathy’s oldest son, Andy, moved into the bunkhouse and became their ranch hand. Andy spent many hours cleaning out the large hay barn and adjoining buildings and yard. He put in the time and effort that the previous caretaker had neglected to do. By June of 1990 the Temescal was in the midst of a very severe drought and most of the cattle were moved to pastures in Nevada. There were only about thirty head left on the Temescal ranch. Andy Weber moved back to Colorado, and the ranch was thereafter without anyone resident on a regular basis. Kathy and Don still commuted back and forth, but now they had to additionally check on things in Nevada.
There was not much activity on the Temescal until January of 1992 when the cattle finally could be moved back to the Temescal from Nevada. They were greeted with heavy rains and mud slides, but it was an auspicious moment to have the herd back on the Temescal once again. Spring came with a wonderful carpet of lush green grass and colorful wildflowers, along with some undesirable weeds, but the Temescal was once again green and filled with happy cattle. It was at this time that Nick Park, Julian Hathaway’s eldest daughter’s son, came to work for the Ranch Company. Once again there was someone on the Temescal besides Kathy and Don to repair water lines, mend fences and feed the cattle in the winter months if and when needed.
Nick Park married in 1994 and during the spring and summer of 1996 renovations on the ranch house began again. The earthquake of 1994 had been hard on the house and it badly needed repairs. Nick modernized the house by replacing the old windows and doors and enclosing the back screen porch. Nick and Patti Park moved into the house in October of 1996 and made it their home for the next eleven years. In early 1997, Nick began showing mild symptoms of loss of body function that became steadily worse until he could no longer work on the ranch. The medical community was never able to diagnose the precise cause of his symptoms. Nick passed away in February of 2007.
The Temescal was hit by another severe drought in the spring of 2003, forcing Kathy and Don to sell off nearly all of the Temescal cattle. It was heart wrenching having to send them off to the sale barn, but they ended up keeping about 60 head, so as to begin the slow process of building up the herd once again. From 1987 through 2008 it had been a constant battle dealing with adverse weather conditions. There were good years, but then very bad years. Cattle had to be sold, the herd culled, and then built back up again.
There was also the constant threat of fires or floods. Several times since 1986 fires had come either extremely close to the Temescal or had actually burned a portion of it. On June 25, 2005, a fire started in upper Oak Canyon and seriously threatened the ranch headquarters and all of our neighbors in the Canyon, but thanks to the quick actions of the Los Angeles County Fire Department only a small area of the ranch burned.
In January and February of 2005, flood waters ravaged the Temescal and did some major damage. Many of the ranch roads were washed out and made impassable, the front gate and main roadway into the ranch was washed out and many of the fences were completely washed out or covered over by several feet of mud. The destruction was devastating, but repairs began in earnest in the spring after the rains ceased and the Temescal once again flourished for a short time.
The year 2007 brought new woes to the Temescal and challenges that were not easy to meet. Another more severe drought struck, Don Weber suffered a heart attack in March of that year and so it seemed like there was no choice but to sell all the cattle and quit the Temescal. Only one truck load of cattle was saved and moved to the Colorado Ranch where they still reside. With no cattle on the ranch, it was a lonely, barren land. It was actually heartwarming when a few of the neighboring ranch’s cattle strayed onto the Temescal. October brought more misery to the land when a fierce fire spread across the entire ranch, burning everything in its path. Luckily, the ranch headquarters were spared and a great many of the giant old oak trees were saved, although there are not as many old giants as previously existed.
January 2008, brought more flooding rains and the Temescal was once again ravaged, but it also came back green in the spring, and so the cycle continues -- rains, floods, earthquakes, fires, and drought. Kathy and Don Weber continue to manage the agricultural/cattle operation on the Hathaway Temescal Ranch, although cattle operations have been dramatically scaled back and maintained at minimal levels due to a continued and severe draught that has persisted now for many years.
The last of Jesse and Lola Hathaway’s children, Julian I. Hathaway, passed away in November of 2000, followed by his wife Helen in July of 2004. Even before this time, however, it was readily apparent to anyone with eyes and ears that the surviving Hathaway family heirs held divergent ideas and goals. At the time, the best seeming solution to these far-reaching differences was to sell the beloved Hathaway Temescal Ranch. Although a simple decision, selling the property turned out to be a contested and lengthy process that culminated, with final documents delivered, in September of 2022.
Excerpted, edited and annotated by Terry Hathaway from a larger original work, circa 1992, by Kathryn Linda (Hathaway) Weber.
Kathy (Hathaway) Weber and Terry Hathaway.
Copyright © 2006-2024 by Hathaway Ranch Museum - All Rights Reserved