05/12/2023
The Little History Museum (the Red Barn) is in the same Shopping Center as the Vail Headquarters where our Hayday Reunion will occur on June 3rd.
HISTORY BEING REBUILT AND RESTORED
BY JOHN HUNNEMAN - STAFF WRITER -PRESS ENTERPRISE
NOV. 3, 2003 12 AM PT
TEMECULA -- It was the biggest building on one of the biggest cattle ranches in Southern California, and for most of the last century you could see it from wherever you stood in the valley.
When the 3,700-square-foot “implement barn,” which housed tools and large machinery for the Vail family’s operation for 75 years, was torn down several years ago, some who cared deeply about the history of the region feared other nearby buildings that served as headquarters and bunkhouses for generations of grizzled cowboys might come down with it to make way for a shopping center.
Now, thanks to the efforts of a local historical group and a shopping center developer, a full-scale replica of the barn is near completion. And with the pending agreement between Riverside County and the property owner, Price Legacy, the remaining buildings of the historic ranch, including the Wolf Store, will be restored and put back into use. The barn building, located next to Kohl’s department store in the Redhawk Towne Center on Highway 79 South, will contain several commercial shops, but will also house an 1,100-square-foot museum for the Vail Ranch Restoration Association, a nonprofit group formed in 1995 to save the buildings of the famed cattle ranch.
“We’re just so happy to have this,” association treasurer Sandy Helzer said. “These buildings could have been destroyed.”
The original barn, which stood where Kohl’s is now, was torn down by the property’s previous owner in 1997.
“It was in a terrible state of disrepair,” said Rhine Helzer, Sandy’s husband and the group’s vice president. “It was practically falling down all by itself.”
Some of the wood from the old barn was stored in another building on the historic site. That wood has been used to line the walls of the restoration association’s portion of the new building. In addition, the tin used on the roof of the new barn came from the Vail Ranch feedlot, which was located on the opposite side of the highway until it was torn down in the mid-1980s. Price Legacy, which bought the property in 1999, worked hand in hand with the historic group to re-create the barn.
Bill Stone, Price Legacy’s senior vice president of development, said the barn should be completed in the next couple of weeks.
“The decision to re-create the implement barn was a show of good faith on our part,” Stone said recently. The company has donated the space in the barn to the restoration group, which will use the space for displays depicting ranch life and the period before the Vail family bought the land when Louis Wolf’s store, which was built about 1868, served as a post office, stage stop and a main trading post for the region.
With its large wide-open bay doors -- which were necessary to get big machinery in and out of the barn -- the Helzers said many curious residents have stopped in to see what is being built.
“Most people think it’s another Jiffy Lube,” Sandy Helzer said. ”They’re happy when they learn what the building really is.”
THE RANCH BUILDINGS
Riverside County and Price Legacy are finalizing an agreement that will restore the other five ranch buildings, which stand between Kohl’s and a shoe store and are currently fenced off from the public.
“We’re still working out the final details,” Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster said in a recent interview. “Hopefully, we will get it worked out soon.”
The agreement calls for the county and the developer to share the restoration cost, estimated at about $10 million.
When completed -- likely 2005 -- several of the buildings will likely be turned into restaurants, said Darrell Farnbach of the association. Another building may house a retail shop.
“We’re not sure how the Wolf Store will be used,” Farnbach said. ”We’d like to see it used as an exhibit hall.”
Like the other members of his group, which began efforts to keep the ranch buildings from being torn down in 1995, Farnbach is thankful their work has produced results.
“It isn’t exactly the way we would have loved to have it,” Farnbach said. “We would have liked to have seen the entire site used as an interpretative center, but we’re lucky to have what we have.”
THE PREVIOUS OWNERS
In August 1876, Walter L. Vail arrived in Arizona looking for land to establish a cattle operation. Along with a partner, Vail purchased a 160-acre homestead near Tucson that was the center of what became the huge Empire Ranch. Vail continued to buy up homesteads until the ranch extended 60 miles north to south and 30 miles east to west.
In 1881, Vail married his longtime sweetheart, Margaret Newhall. The couple started their family, which eventually numbered seven children, at the Arizona ranch. Family members continued to live on Empire Ranch until it was sold in 1928.
Vail’s influence grew along with his ranch. He was elected to the 10th Territorial Legislature and served for a brief period on the Pima County Board of Supervisors.
Vail’s riches also grew. He and several partners operated the Total Wreck silver mine on the ranch. Vail invested his silver money in his cattle operation and those profits allowed him to look west to California where, in 1888, along with partner Carol W. Gates, Vail leased the Warner Ranch, east of Temecula, to expand the operation.
In July 1905, Vail and Gates bought the Temecula and Pauba ranchos -- about 38,000 acres -- from the San Francisco Savings Bank. In addition, they bought part of the Little Temecula Rancho, where the Wolf Store was located, and Rancho Santa Rosa, in the hills west of Murrieta. By the time they were through, the Vail family owned nearly 87,500 acres in and around Temecula.
Gates soon left the partnership and Walter Vail would not live to see his Temecula ranch prosper. In December 1906, he was crushed between two streetcars in Los Angeles.
Vail’s sons took over the operation, with Mahlon Vail given responsibility for the Temecula property. The cattle ranch operated until Mahlon Vail sold the property to developers in December 1964 for $21 million.
Two months later, the new owners unveiled plans for a master-planned community they dubbed Rancho California. Several months later, Mahlon Vail died at the age of 74.
The buildings of the old ranch fell into disrepair over the next several decades and were often targets of vandalism and home to vagrants before the Vail Ranch Restoration Association began its efforts in 1995.
A CELEBRATION IN THE WORKS
Local historical groups and the Temecula Valley Museum have begun meeting to plan a yearlong celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Vail Ranch.
“We’re hoping to get organizations from all over the area involved,” said Wendell Ott, the city- operated museum’s director.
As envisioned, the celebration will begin on July, 2004, and last for an entire year.
“We plan to have monthly demonstrations, lectures, fiestas and exhibits both here at the museum and at the ranch site,” Ott said. ”We’re hoping to identify relatives and people who are still here and worked on the ranch to record their history.”
Meanwhile, with the implement barn nearing completion, association members are busy designing their displays and plan to offer the first tours of their new museum to a group of third-graders from Sparkman Elementary School in early February.
“We’ve already booked the date,” Farnbach said. “So, we need to get moving.”
