Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a four-part story on the history of ranching in Plumas County. Read Part 1, published May 17. Look for Part 3 May 31, and Part 4 June 7.
The names of the old ranching families are everywhere in Plumas County, as familiar as the landmarks and roadways that still carry them — Bresciani, Chandler, Galeppi, Maddalena, Olsen, Roberti, Ramelli, Stover and Taylor. In the upcoming installments of our story on ranching in Plumas County, we’ll take a closer look at just a few of these historic working landscapes, and how they are used today, beginning with those in the Indian and American valleys.
American Valley ranches: New England and Chandler
In 1852 James Beckwourth led the second group of settlers through American Valley bound for Marysville. With them was Daniel Rogers Cate, of Boston. Cate founded the New England Ranch near Quincy with two partners.
In the beginning, they weren’t specialists. The three men mined for gold in the mountains above Spring Garden, cut and sold timber, grew vegetables and wheat, and raised dairy cattle. They built the sawmill that gave Mill Creek its name, and when it burned down not long after, they took the opportunity to expand to a combination saw and grist mill.
The New England Ranch was home to more than 100 workers, as well as the site of the first store and the first blacksmith in the valley. The barn, which still stands at the corner of Chandler Road and Quincy Junction Road, most likely dates from about this time. Like the other local barns of its era, it is a dairy barn with handhewn beams and originally had no metal nails. In the past, there was a second barn on the property. Lane Labbe, who now owns the New England Ranch, plans to rebuild it in the same style.
A wagon road traced the rim of the valley approximately where Chandler Road runs today, linking the ranch to Elizabethtown in the hills at the west end of American Valley, near what is now the end of Purdy Lane, off Highway 70.
In time, the partners began to split the business. One retired. Cate sold out of the timber part of the business to focus on ranching after suffering from snow blindness while hauling supplies from Marysville for the store. Two of Cate’s siblings moved out from the East as well. (Cate’s brother, Dr. LaFayette Cate, would later be involved in a notorious shootout in front of the Capitol Saloon in downtown Quincy — but that is a story for another time.)
In 1863, Daniel Cate married Hannah Ann Loring, who had traveled with her family from Maine to settle at Elizabethtown the prior year. It was around the time of his marriage that Cate built the farm house, which still stands at the corner of Quincy Junction and Chandler roads. All five Cate children were born there. Nearby is a stone creamery, now an office, which, the current owner says, was likely built with the house.
Shortly before his death in 1900, Cate sold the New England Ranch to John Galeppi and moved to a home at the corner of Jackson and East in Quincy, which is also still standing. Galeppi’s father, William Galeppi, came to Plumas in 1872, part of a wave of Swiss-Italian settlers in the region. John Galeppi owned the New England Ranch until his death in 1975. He never married, but according to Labbe, had a foster child, Robert “Bob” McDonald, who was raised on the ranch and continued to work there as an adult. McDonald served in the Navy during World War II and was a rancher for 30 years. His initials, “R.L.McD,” along with the date “10-22-68” mark the concrete where the old barn was expanded or repaired.
After Galeppi’s death, the property was acquired by a Nebraska-based investment company with plans to develop a golf course with the farmhouse as its club building. In 1995, the house was briefly run as a bed and breakfast.
In 2000, the property again became a family home when it was purchased by the Labbes. Formerly a Southern California mortgage banker, Lane Labbe bought a cabin by Eagle Lake north of Susanville and began exploring the surrounding region. He and his family purchased the ranch with the aim of generating some income while “keeping agriculture and that way of life … homesteading, agriculture, growing things, living off the land … alive.” Labbe estimates that he has invested at least $500,000 renovating the property.
Of the move from Southern California, he says, “this is a much better view.”
Today the ranch’s main business is boarding horses, with 17 horses on the property belonging to 15 clients. The Labbes also lease to a cattle operation with 40 to 50 head, raise quail and chickens, and grow a garden with corn and potatoes. In past years they have raised industrial hemp. “It’s a smaller place [than it once was] but we do pretty well with the horses,” said Labbe.
Of the future, Labbe says he is “tired of seeing barns fall down in this county.” People buy ranches, but don’t work them. “We need owners — people who buy the old places and make a go,” he said.
A little to the east lies Chandler Ranch, owned since 1986 by Beth and Russel Reid.
The ranch was established by Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Chandler. Originally from upstate New York, Chandler spent many years in the Midwest before traveling with his family to California in 1873 and purchasing 431 acres. He built barns and a brick house on the property; both still stand today.
The barn is likely the older of the two structures. According to the current owners, the logs used in the construction would have been pulled to the property by horse and milled on site. It was originally a post-and-beam barn with wooden dowels instead of nails. It is an East Coast design, as many were at the time, reflecting emigration patterns.
The house was built in the 1880s. According to architectural designer David Daun, it was built by Chinese laborers using locally fired bricks 18 inches thick.
“It is really a fine house to be built in Plumas County,” Daun told the Feather River Bulletin in 1986. “They even built double bay windows on a brick house. I never saw that before. You see the big bays in San Francisco, but only on wood houses.”
Like other early ranchers, Chandler started out growing a variety of produce, which was taken by horse to the mines in Johnsville, explained Beth Reid. The Reids have found old bills of sale for potatoes, apples, and sauerkraut. At that time, the barn was used to store hay and feed horses. Later, the ranch became a dairy farm, with cattle, pigs and sheep. The barn was used for hay and milking.
After the Chandler family, the ranch was owned by Ernie Leonhardt. Near the house is a freestanding carriage house, now used as a garage. During Leonhardt’s time it was a dining area for staff, said Reid. The hands would come in from the field for lunch, the main meal, wash at the creek running alongside the house, and eat at long tables in the shade.
Before acquiring the property, the Reids ran a children’s camp at Gold Lake, with horses as part of the experience; a stable was open to the public. “As a result, we had a lot of horses,” she said. They started out growing hay just to feed their stable, but eventually added beef cattle as well.
“The cattle industry in Plumas/Sierra is very tight knit, with families that have been in it for four generations or more,” said Reid.
She hopes to see the continuation of that vibrant community, and also hopes that “future generations can afford to live on the ranch and get some sort of income.” But Reid warns there are “very few that don’t also have a full-time job as well” — particularly now that getting insurance has become such a challenge.
“It’s darn hard,” she said.
Indian Valley ranches: Taylor, Ford and Peter
In 1852, when Cate and his business partners were busy establishing the New England Ranch in American Valley, on the other side of Mount Hough Jobe Taylor was founding Taylor’s Ranch in Indian Valley.
It was not Taylor’s first visit to the valley. He had passed through in ’49 via the Lassen Route on the way to the gold fields at Long’s Bar, Bidwell’s Bar and, finally, Nelson Creek. In 1851 he returned, traversing the summit from American Valley to Indian Valley with Noble’s Party, a group of 80 or so miners who gave the valley its name. Reportedly, as they descended the slope, the men of Noble’s Party noticed a number of Native Americans digging roots — probably camas — in the meadow below. None of the men had actually seen any Native people in the area before, and so they agreed to call the valley “Indian Valley.” (In fact, Peter Lassen had already named it Cache Valley, but it was the new title that ultimately stuck.) During the summer of ’51 there were nearly 1,000 men prospecting in and around Indian Valley, but as was typical, most departed during the harshest months of the winter season.
When Taylor returned for the third time in spring 1852, he was there to stay. Both Taylor and Peter Lassen cut hay in the valley that season. Lassen started a garden and trading post. Taylor built the first house and, in the autumn, opened the first store and hotel at what was then known as Taylor’s Ranch. Before long there were 50 farms in the valley, spread out across 14,000 acres, with about 3,000 used for grain and the rest for pasture and hay.
Like its counterparts in American Valley, Taylor’s Ranch was a diverse business and doubled as a town center. Taylor planted wheat and barley. He built both a sawmill and a grist mill, which eventually grew to ship Taylorsville Flour throughout California, Oregon and Washington. He even opened the first post office, where he served as postmaster. Jobe’s brother, Edwin Taylor, followed him to Plumas County in 1861. Their home stood at the corner of what is now Main Street and Cemetery Street in Taylorsville, across from the museum. Though it is no longer standing, several sugar maple and Osage orange trees brought back from their old Pennsylvania homestead by their daughter Azalia Taylor Gee remain on the empty lot.
More settlers soon arrived. Some of the first were James and Martha Ford, who, with James’ brother Jack, traveled overland from New Hampshire. In 1852 Jim Beckwourth led them on the last leg of the journey from Nevada to mine along Spanish Creek.
Their daughter, Harriet Ford Torrey, describes how they first heard of Indian Valley about a year after their arrival in a memoir available at the Indian Valley Museum: “While staying in the Spanish Peak diggings the brothers had heard of a beautiful spot over the mountains northwardly called Indian Valley, so designated because of the native inhabitants. … Realizing the uncertainty of hunting for gold, he [James] deemed it to be the part of wisdom to secure land whereby to make a living.” The Fords accordingly purchased 460 acres on the North Arm Feather River. Although ranching was their primary business, James and Jack never gave up on mining. It was the Ford brothers who first discovered copper in the region. James’ family remained on the ranch until shortly after his death in 1886. The property was acquired by the Defanti family in 1927; descendants still run the ranch today.
Also on the North Arm lies the Peter Ranch, established in 1868, and still owned and operated by the Peter family. Originally a self-sufficient homestead raising a variety of crops and livestock, the Peter Ranch was run as a dairy farm into the 1930s. From the 1940s through the 1960s the family raised beef cattle. Today, the meadows are leased to another rancher, who raises red Angus.
According to a 2013 interview with James Peter, also housed at the Taylorsville Museum, there are three original barns on the property dating from the 1860s. The fact that they are still standing is remarkable. The ranch was threatened during the 2021 Dixie Fire but was saved by Russ Peter, Debbie Allen and their neighbors, who used their small tractor to cut a fireline — an act celebrated in the 2023 coloring book “The Little Dozer That Did.”
Coming up in Part 3
In Part 3 of the story, we take a look at some of the historic ranches of Big Meadows and the Almanor Basin. Read Part 1, published May 17. Look for Part 3 May 31 and Part 4 June 7.
References and further reading
Geissner, Jo. “Taylor’s Ranch, Now Taylorsville.” Mountain Valley Living. Sept. 15, 2012.
“Recollections of Indian Valley.” Feather River Bulletin. Jan. 18, 1868.
Torrey, Harriet Ford. Just Between Ourselves: A Book of Recollections of My Father, James Ford, Written for the Family. Available at the Indian Valley Museum.
Week, Betsy Curry. “Plumas Places and Faces: Taylorsville Scrapbook Pictures and Memories.” Indian Valley Record. May 7, 1986.
