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THE FIRST COWBOYS who worked for Walter Vail from 1888 until 1984 (James Walsh, William Carpenter, and James Knight) were single men, but in 1894, Samuel B. Taylor (1861-1939), a valley resident since the 1880s, and his wife Mary Helm Taylor (1870-1966) moved into the ranch house to manage the Vail cattle. Both California natives, three of the couple's eight children were born at the ranch house. The Taylor family left the ranch house c. 1915. Drew Smith, their great-great-grandson, is the current ranch foreman and resides in the nearby 1930s home built to accommodate the former bunkhouse cook and her daughter, and later, other cowboys. Art Fann, a famous Imperial County cowboy, recently retired as the cattle foreman after a lengthy tenure at the ranch. Many descendants of the Taylor family still live in the Warner Springs valley.
BORN IN RANCHITA IN 1891, foreman Ed Grand lived in the ranch house until 1935, along with a multitude of cowboys who assisted him, as the ranch house also served as a boarding facility. Nephews Charles and George Sawday lived there as teenagers during summers and weekends to help with the round-ups. Career cowboys Zeb and Gib Reed, Charley Ponchetti, Harold Smith, and others boarded there year round. During restoration and archeology work, Ponchetti's wallet was found beneath the floorboards; it contained the snapshots on this page. George Sawday often lunched at the ranch house and conducted business there.
After Grand moved to Campo in 1935, Sawday's son-in-law Hans Starr managed the ranch from Witch Creek. Cowboys conducted the day-to-day operations and continued to live in the ranch house until 1960, when it passed into the hands of the Vista Irrigation District.
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| Left Ranch foreman Samuel B. Taylor and son in front of the south side of the ranch house in 1904. Right The ranch house c. 1910. Photos courtesy San Diego History Center |
Information excerpted from "The Ranch House at Warner's" by Kathleen Flanigan, which appeared in the Journal of San Diego History, Fall 1996, Volume 42, Number 4 |
Cattle Barons & Cowboys - 1 | 2
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