The drive from San Diego to Warner Springs is a bit of a trek, almost an hour and a half depending on traffic. But the time spent getting to the Warner-Carrillo Ranch House is worth it, especially if you’re even a little interested in the history of the American West.
The old adobe appears all of a sudden as you round a curve on San Felipe Road. The structure was here long before the current asphalt pavement.
Before the current ranch house was built, there was a camping stop here on the Gila Overland Trail to California. That was in the 1840s and ‘50s. The structure that was here then was built by former California State Sen. Jonathan Trumbull Warner.
Native Americans, who had been there for thousands of years at that point, burned it down in an uprising in 1851. It was rebuilt by the family that gave it its second name — Carrillo.
“The true builder of this building was the lady whose portrait is on the wall over here, and her name is Vicenta Sepulveda de Yorba de Carrillo,” said Kathryn Fletcher, the head docent at the Warner Carillo Ranch House. She said she wanted to make it clear who was responsible for the house that’s there now.
Fletcher is steeped in the history of this far-flung part of San Diego County.
“My family has owned property here since 1939,” Fletcher said. “It’s one of the few places in Southern California that’s relatively unchanged in 180 years and so we’re trying to keep it that way.”
More about Vicenta: Her husband, Ramon Carrillo, was murdered in 1864, leaving Vicenta to run the 9,000 acre ranch and manage a large family. Twelve of her 14 children lived into adulthood.
But there was much more taking up Vicenta’s time than a lot of kids and a ranch.
“She has not only all this acreage, she also has a post office and the contract for the Butterfield stage,” Fletcher said.
A post office, a trading post and a stop on the Butterfield stage. This was California’s first regular, overland transcontinental stage connection with St. Louis. The six-year contract with Butterfield ended in 1861 when the Civil War broke out.
The Carrillos left their ranch and moved to Anaheim in the late 1860s.
Former California Gov. John G. Downey bought the place after that and turned it into a massive sheep and cattle operation. The Downey period lasted until the Taylor family arrived.
“Sam Taylor and his wife and eight children lived here from 1895 until 1915 in this house with no running water or electricity,” Fletcher said.
After the Taylors left, the ranch house transitioned into a cowboy bunkhouse and a place to store items needed for the ranch. During the 1930s, the cowboys hosted celebrity visitors here, like John Wayne, who wanted a realistic “Old West” experience.
The Vista Irrigation District bought the ranch house and surrounding 43,000 acres in 1946 for the water rights linked to nearby Lake Henshaw. The ranch house fell into disrepair. Even so, it was named a national historic landmark in 1961.
The district partnered with SOHO, the Save Our Heritage Organisation in 2011 to restore the building. But it’s not the only historic building on the site.
There’s a barn, built a year after the house. It’s not restored, but when you look inside, you can see how the structure has been stabilized. Fletcher said there’s a good reason to save it.
“It is the last hand-hewn barn in San Diego County,” she said.
Fletcher said if SOHO can raise the money to restore the barn, they will. But for now, that’s a chapter that remains to be written about this extraordinary treasure trove of San Diego county history.
