reader (the Second)
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 5213
Location: Northern Virginia
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 Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:24 pm Post subject: |
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Well, amazingly enough, they weren't Italian, they were SWISS. I recognize 90% of these names from my classmates in elementary and high school.
It's one of the most beautiful places in the world, really. Look up Pt. Reyes National Seashore.
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One day in late 1891, in Monte Carasso, Switzerland, 17-year-old Domenico Grossi planted a grape seedling and told his mother he was going to America.
He promised to return to Monte Carasso with some extra money for the family before the seedling bore fruit.
Today that seedling is part of a 2,000-square-meter vineyard, but Grossi's mother -- despite Domenico's promise -- never saw her son again.
Grossi was too busy becoming one of the most successful ranchers in West Marin history, in time acquiring six ranches from Point Reyes to Hicks Valley to Marshall, eventually doling them out to his children.
And although he never went home to Switzerland, Grossi made good on part of his promise. He sent a share of his West Marin earnings home, which improved life for his impoverished family.
"It might have been a small amount for those in America, [but for his family] here it was always a large amount," noted Grossi's cousin Edda Grossi, 81, who still lives in Monte Carasso.
"His parents didn't want him to go," she said. "But he had set his mind on [it], so he went. The others all stayed here."
Grossi was typical of 20,000 Italian-speaking Swiss who between 1850 and 1930 fled oppressive poverty in the Canton of Ticino for California -- West Marin in particular, noted Giorgio Cheda of Locarno, a professor at the Locarno Teachers College who is an expert on Swiss emigration.
In fact, the only places in California to attract more Swiss immigrants than West Marin were the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Giorgio Cheda (left), a distant cousin of Point Reyes Station's Sonny and Vernon Cheda, and his friend Laura Bono, niece of the late Cerini brothers of Tomales, at her home in Maggia. Cheda has studied Swiss emigration for 30 years. (Light photo by Janine Collins)
Ticino, Switzerland's only canton (or state) south of the Alps, borders Northern Italy and mirrors its southern neighbor in language and culture. Not surprisingly, most of the Italian-sounding names found among today's West Marin residents -- Spaletta, Martinelli, Cheda, Campigli, Corda, Genazzi, Cerini, Dolcini, Respini, Gambonini, Lafranchi, etc. -- are actually Swiss.
Although the Ticinese arrived broke in West Marin, many of the immigrants worked hard and saved enough money to begin buying ranch land. Today these families own a combined 41,500 acres -- a staggering 30 percent of all the agricultural land in Marin County.
Swiss merchants
And the Swiss immigrants did not just prosper at ranching. EB Martinelli of Nicasio, whose father was one of the first to arrive in West Marin, was elected to the state Senate in 1908 and served two terms.
Another Martinelli, Attilio, after whom the centerpiece building in Inverness is named, served as county supervisor in the 1920s and 30s.
Ralph Grossi, grandson of Domenico Grossi, now represents West Marin agriculture in Washington DC, where he is president of the American Farmland Trust.
The late Nicasio rancher Henry Tomasini, another Swiss descendent, started the First National Bank in Tiburon and later Northbay Savings and Loan in Petaluma.
Four immigrant merchants -- Louis and Salvatore Grandi, Quinto Codoni, and Peter Scilacci -- started building Point Reyes Station's business district around 1880 and dominated it for four decades.
Giacominis & Chedas
Another Swiss immigrant, Celeste Domenighini, bore two sons who would also play prominent roles in town commerce: Toby Giacomini, the trucking company and feed barn owner, and his brother Waldo, a rancher who once owned the Palace Market. (Their father was Italian.)
Switzerland's Cheda family -- pronounced KAY-da in Ticino, CHEE-da here -- gave Point Reyes Station the late garage owner Dolph. His son Adolph (better known as Sonny), now owns Cheda's Chevrolet. Cousin Vernon Cheda formerly owned what is now Becker's deli.
Background to emigration
What prompted the migration? During the first half of the 19th century, tiny Ticino (twice the land area of Marin County) was devastated by political and economic upheavals both within Switzerland and in neighboring Italy.
Prior to Italian unification, Northern Italian nationalists often operated out of Switzerland in their war for independence from Austrian rule.
Austria responded by blockading the Italian-Swiss border, which cut off commerce between the two nations and left more than 6,000 Ticinese employed in Italy unable to support their families.
And there were usually many mouths to feed; birth control was rare and the additional children were viewed as potential workers who would help support the family. But the land was mostly rocky and unproductive, and by the mid-1800s was overburdened by a growing population, noted Professor Cheda.
Poverty in Ticino
To raise the animals necessary to sustain a single family with milk and food, villagers each spring perilously trekked with a couple of cows and goats to meadows in the high Alps, where the animals would graze all summer.
For many villagers, their work was wretched and their prospects bleak. Food was scarce. Infant mortality was high. Villagers lived at a level "just a bit above misery," said Edda Grossi of Monte Carasso.
"We never had any meat," said Locarno's Piero Lafranchi, 81, an uncle of Nicasio rancher Willie Lafranchi.
"Mostly what we ate was polenta," he explained through an interpreter. "Our staple diet was polenta: polenta and milk, milk and polenta, polenta and cheese, cheese and polenta."
Added his nephew Luciano, 65: "They had nothing to do here. They had no possibility for earning a bit of money. The only solution was to go to the States, so they went."
Finding work here
With little to lose, young Ticinese men set out for the United States where they hoped to cash in on the Californian Gold Rush. Soon, however, they turned to what they knew best -- cows.
What else, asked Luciano Lafranchi, "were they able to do? Nothing. Cows, cows, cows...Look after the cows. They had no profession."
Point Reyes Station rancher Harold Genazzi, the son of an immigrant, made the same point: "They had to scatter. There was nothin' doin' over there. They followed the dairy cow to the Northern Coast."
Referring to Ticino, Genazzi added, "My dad used to call it the land of misery."
A failed emigration
The Swiss emigration that began in 1849 was not Ticino's first. Boatloads of Ticinese had previously set off for an Australian gold rush but enjoyed no luck. A few found menial labor in Australia. Others found nothing at all. Most returned poorer than when they left.
For most who emigrated to California, however, the story had a happier ending. By 1851, noted Professor Cheda, word was getting around Ticino that California was truly a land of opportunity. Swiss newspapers reported on emigrant success stories.
Beginning that year, Swiss men from the Valle Maggia -- Ticino's Maggia River Valley -- first went to work at on the dairy ranches of West Marin. The names in this early group: Moretti, Garzoli, Pedrazzini, Righetti, DeMartini, and Tomasini.
The Martins and Dolcinis
Among the early immigrants was Carlo Martinoia from the village of Cevio. He changed his name to Charles Martin upon arriving in California and worked briefly in the gold fields. According to great-grandson Peter Dolcini of Hicks Valley, Martin lost his gold fever after a brother was stabbed to death, and he headed west to milk cows.
Martin followed the Swiss tradition of thrift and hard work. In 1856, just four years after reaching West Marin, Martin bought a large ranch in Chileno Valley. In 1870, before moving to San Diego to raise cattle, Martin had become the 26th richest landowner in Marin County, having amassed $36,000 worth of land. In comparison, Tomales founder John Keys' broad land holdings were worth $48,000, the 1870 census reported.
Martin's legacy -- the Dolcini estate -- survives today. Martin's daughter Anita married Pietro Dolcini, who with his brother Michael had emigrated from Cevio to Nicasio in 1880. The Dolcinis' father, Joseph, had previously taken part in the ill-fated emigration to Australia.
Today, the Dolcini estate owns more land in Marin County than any other private owner -- a total of 8,100 acres spread over nine ranches in Nicasio, Hicks, and Chileno valleys.
70 years of emigration
Martin and his contemporaries, however, were only the first wave of dairymen to leave the Valle Maggia for West Marin. In 1856, Austria dropped its blockade of Switzerland, and emigration slowed until 1868. That year, a series of floods around Lake Maggiore ruined crops and killed cattle, forcing another mass exodus.
By 1870, some 350 Ticinese were living on this coast. Settling particularly in Chileno and Hicks valleys and around Point Reyes Station and Olema were West Marin's first Chedas, Fioris (changed to Blooms), Martinellis, Scilaccis, Codonis, Campiglis, Giacominis, Genazzis, Grandis, Cerinis, Maggettis, and Respinis.
Those families were soon after joined by other Swiss with names like: Corda, Gambonini, Dado, Salmina, Barboni, Codiroli, and Pedranti. Still later, the immigration brought: Spalettas, Grossis, Giubbinis, Rodonis, Ambrosinis, Bianchis, Buzzinis, and Lafranchis.
For the most part poor, young (15 to 25 years old), and unable to speak English, the immigrants generally started as hands on existing dairies. In 1880, wages typically ran $10 to $15 per month plus food and lodging.
But while other Californians gradually abandoned the farm for urban industries, West Marin's Italian Swiss tended to keep plugging at what they knew best. "The migrants failed to conform to the California economic pattern of the time, but followed what seemed to be their own best chance for advancement," noted historian HF Raup's book Italian Swiss in California.
Whether to return to Ticino?
Until 1915, it was common for immigrants who amassed savings in West Marin to return to Ticino, although some found it difficult to readapt to Old World ways.
Moreover, those who stayed away unintentionally improved the lives of those who stayed behind. "The Golden State was the best opportunity for the people in Ticino," noted Professor Cheda. Not only did they send money home, they alleviated overpopulation in Ticino.
Even those who eventually returned helped the canton. Because so many young men were gone for years at a time, marriages were postponed, wives had fewer children, and the birthrate dipped.
Cheda said he believes this "natural birth control" was the most important demographic phenomenon of the Ticino-California migration: "The women, instead of having the first baby at 18 years, have it at 25 years -- almost 10 years later. And this way you cut almost 50 percent of the births. That's impressive, no?"
New standard of living
This falling birthrate and an influx of money from emigrants in America improved the general standard of living throughout Ticino, said Professor Cheda.
Families were better off financially. Parents were more mature when they had children and produced fewer of them, and so it was easier to feed and educate children.
Cheda has demographically studied areas in Ticino where there was significant emigration and places where fewer people left. "The most important thing, in my opinion, is the capacity of writing," he said. "It means in the places where the people migrated [out], the young [who remained] received instruction. They write and read."
However, the emigration also had a grim side. With so many men gone, the women had to take over the brutal work in Ticino.
In the late 1800s, the professor noted, Swiss doctors began finding that numerous girls were suffering serious bone deformities in the pelvic area caused by carrying heavy loads on their backs during their early teens.
As a result of the deformity, if such a woman became pregnant, in many cases "the women and child died [during birth]," Cheda said.
Creation of social classes
Migration also stratified the Valle Maggia into a system of social classes. Emigrants who returned from West Marin and elsewhere with money were afforded higher status.
Cheda's father Americo, for instance, was able to double the size of his house upon returning from California.
Indeed, in the Ticinese village of Someo, for example, the social distinctions carried to the grave. "In the early times, we had a poor cemetery for the people who stayed all their lives in Someo, and they stayed poor people," the professor explained.
"But the rich people...they come back from California, and they built these big, wonderful houses. [And] they built a new cemetery for only these people coming from California -- a private cemetery with big stone monuments."
No doubt the emigrants had earned all this. A writer for the 1927 History of Banking in California, which spotlighted some of the more prominent Swiss immigrants, was particularly impressed: "Among the people of foreign nations who have settled in this country, none have been more worthy of success than those from Switzerland...
"They possess to a marked degree the innate qualities that go to make a people great in the truest sense."
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reader (the Second)
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 5213
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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I promise I'll stop posting about Pt. Reyes now! I was looking for history and found a local historian is giving talks entitled "From Bovines to BMWs"... Just as I wrote. Here's one of the Point ranch fourth generationers, probably a daughter of one of my classmates or his brothers.
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Jolynn Mendoza, 21, a fourth-generation Point Reyes dairy rancher, grew up farming in a national park, an arrangement that seems as natural to her as the region's soupy fog and grazing Holsteins.
The rancher's daughter plans to be tending cows on the Point Reyes peninsula for the rest of her life, using her college background in environmental studies to be a conscientious steward of the public land her family farms.
"I've never known any different. When I was born our ranch was already part of the national park," said Mendoza, who has herded cows since she was 3. "There have always been park rangers around and, ever since I can remember, our landlord has been the federal government."
Mendoza, the daughter of Joe and Linda Mendoza, is among the next generation of ranchers taking over family homesteads within Point Reyes National Seashore, 70,000 acres of pristine Marin County coastal land and historic ranches that became a national park in 1962.
Those who thought farming would eventually fade away at Point Reyes underestimated the grit of determined ranchers like Mendoza who consider the national park home.
"The young people at Point Reyes are the most motivated that I have seen in their efforts to survive in agriculture," said Steve Quirt of the U.C. Cooperative Extension in Marin County. "I think it's because they are in an isolated agricultural community that still has very deep roots in farming."
But even as succeeding generations continue to take over the historic ranches in the park's "Cultural Landscape Zone," park officials are developing a general management plan to guide the park's future.
The five proposals under consideration range from expanding ranching activities at Point Reyes National Seashore to phasing out livestock ranching as the original families discontinue dairy or beef cattle production because of age, economics or any of the other reasons ranchers go out of business.
Famed for butter
Point Reyes is one of only a few national parks that have commercial dairies and beef cattle ranches within their boundaries. The park not only preserves a slice of coastal paradise but a farming legacy that goes back 150 years, when Point Reyes' famed butter was shipped on schooners to San Francisco.
Farm families forced to sell their land for the park now lease back their ranches as tenants of American taxpayers. They pay rent based on comparable Bay Area grazing fees and are responsible for the cost of all improvements such as barns and fences.
To survive financially in agriculture, these families -- descendents of sturdy immigrant stock -- have had to become innovative, resourceful and efficient to stay on the land and hold on to a vanishing way of life. They are targeting niche markets like grass-fed beef and diversifying with crops such as artichokes, berries and herbs.
Mendoza's determination to follow her father, grandfather and great-grandfather in the dairy business on Point Reyes means cows will be dotting the park's wind-swept landscape for many more years. And she's not alone in keeping the cow culture alive.
Young ranchers like David Evans, Kevin Lunny and the Kehoe brothers are among the dozen third-, fourth- or fifth-generation Point Reyes ranchers continuing the family tradition on land they consider part of their heritage.
"As caretakers of this public land we must be model farmers," said Evans, 31, a fourth-generation Point Reyes rancher who produces grass-fed beef and free-range chicken eggs. "We must produce the highest quality products and be the best stewards of the land to secure the continued existence of the ranches our families founded."
Park officials say as long as these ranching families want to be in Point Reyes National Seashore they can stay on the federally owned ranches. Protecting the region's agriculture was part of the mandate in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy signed legislation authorizing the park.
Although many of those pioneer families opposed the park -- and the government's acquisition of their land -- when the park was approved by Congress, succeeding generations have come to accept the unique relationship, co-existing with the federal bureaucracy, park rangers, campers and hikers.
2.5 million visitors
The park attracts more than 2.5 million people each year, with visitors riding bicycles or driving cars on roads that often pass through the center of the ranch headquarters.
"We treat this ranch as if we still owned it. The park people let us do our own thing thing as long as we adhere to the environmental and water-quality rules," said third-generation dairy rancher Tim Kehoe, 42, who runs the family's "J" Ranch with his twin brother, Tom, and younger brother, Mike Kehoe, 39. The Kehoe brothers milk 450 cows and grow silage on the 1,000 acre ranch their grandfather, the late James Kehoe, started farming in 1922.
The Kehoes, like their longtime neighbors, the McClures, plan to be in the dairy business for many more decades. Both dairies, which produce premium-quality milk for Clover-Stornetta Farms' North Coast Excellence program, are investing in new barns and facilities.
Park officials know of no ranching family in the Point Reyes National Seashore planning to give up their cows because they've come to the end of the line of family members willing to carry on.
"It's very unique to have beef and dairy ranches operating within a national park," said John Dell'Osso, chief of interpretation and resource education at Point Reyes National Seashore. "But agriculture is part of this park and the park is committed to preserving the cultural landscape at Point Reyes."
Dell'Osso said the park is now taking public comment on the five proposals for the General Management Plan, a blueprint for the park's future. Early public hearings indicate strong support for keeping the working ranches part of the park. Public comment will be used in developing a draft plan that will be published next year, with the final management plan expected to be adopted in 2006.
Dell'Osso said even if the park adopts a plan that focuses on preserving natural resources rather than Point Reyes' ranching activities, none of the existing ranchers would be evicted. Most of the ranchers have 20-year leases, which can be renewed. "No matter what happens, the ranchers that are here now can stay until they decide to leave."
Ranchers say there are drawbacks and benefits to ranching at Point Reyes. Park officials must approve plans for barns and other outbuildings, a process that took nearly three years when the McClure family sought to build a 60,000-square-foot barn to house their cows.
Among the benefits, Mendoza said, are the area's nearly perfect climate for cows and the lush grasses that grow on the coastal pastures. "Another advantage is that because we don't own the land, the pressure is off," she added. "We can't sell it but we can continue to farm it."
Help with transition
As an agent with U.C. Cooperative Extension, Quirt works closely with west Marin County ranchers, helping landowners make the transition to organic farming or finding alternative crops so they can be agriculturally diverse. He said the young ranchers in Point Reyes National Seashore are leading the way in sustainable farming and marketing specialty products, like David Evans and his Marin Sun Farms' grass-fed beef and free-range eggs.
"They want to keep doing what their families have done there for generations," Quirt said, "but they are doing it differently and in ways that appeal to today's consumers and markets."
Quirt said the young people are motivated more by the ideals of good farming and quality-of-life than getting rich. He said even after going to college and earning a degree they forego higher paying jobs to come back to the family ranch.
Keeping his family on the land by producing a better beef steak is what drives Kevin Lunny, a third-generation Point Reyes cattle rancher who is using both science and tradition to produce high-end grassfed beef. He's also putting in five acres of food crops -- artichokes, berries and other produce -- to sell from an old dairy barn at his family's historic "G" Ranch.
"We are looking at ways to add value to what we do here so we can stay in ranching," said Lunny, 46. "It's also a way to involve more family members and keep the next generation interested."
Like many American ranchers, Lunny works full time off the ranch, running a family-owned grading and paving company in Inverness. Even with 200 beef cows, Lunny said it's not enough to support his family, which includes his wife Nancy and their 16-year-old triplets, Sean, Brigid and Patrick, students at St. Vincent's High School in Petaluma.
Lunny believes quality is key to survival for Sonoma-Marin ranchers trying to compete with big agricultural corporations. In his quest for quality, Lunny recently had a team of animal scientists from Oklahoma use ultra-sound technology to evaluate the muscle in his beef cattle, an Angus-Hereford cross. The information will be used to genetically select animals to produce the most tender, flavorful beef on Point Reyes pastures.
"We are grass farmers. We use the native grasses here at Point Reyes to produce the best beef we can," said Lunny, whose grandfather, Joseph Lunny, settled on the ranch in the early 1940s.
Looking around at other parts of Marin and Sonoma counties, Point Reyes ranchers have come to appreciate what the park has done to save this beautiful land from commercial development. In the 1950s and '60s developers had eyed Point Reyes' 70,000 acres for coastal resorts, seaside estates and even a Coney Island-style theme park.
"I would guess Point Reyes might look a lot like Monterey today if it hadn't become a park," said Mike Kehoe.
POINT REYES AT A GLANCE
What: Point Reyes National Seashore, approximately 22 miles north of San Francisco on Highway 1. Established in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy and encompassing more than 70,000 acres.
Farming: Point Reyes farms include six dairies and nine beef cattle ranches encompassing more than 20,000 acres in park's cultural landscape zone. Ten additional beef cattle ranches, covering about 9,000 acres, are in the Olema Valley, outside the National Seashore but part of the greater Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
History: Before the park was founded 40 years ago, there were 27 dairies and cattle ranches on the Point Reyes peninsula. Some ranchers left once their land was taken for the park; others quit over the years due to slim profit margins.
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