Family Owned and Operated Since 1981
Dude Ranch Histories & The California Gold Rush |
| The recorded history of Marble Mountain Ranch begins in the late 1860's when Samuel Stanshaw, a veteran of the Civil War, moved West during the California Gold Rush and claimed water and mining rights to establish the Stanshaw Mining Company on the Klamath River just North of Somes Bar. His 1867 County Water filing records a claim of 600 miners inches on the Klamath River tributary now bearing Stanshaw’s name. |  |
Chinese Laborers Build The Early Ranch Infrastructure |
Stanshaw's mining operations attracted Chinese immigrants to the Ranch to provide manual labor for the construction of diverse water canals and extraction of oar and continued at least through the 1920s when this distructive practice was prohibited by some of our country's earliest environmental legislation. However, the establishment of these water diversions and their concurrent provision of hydroelectic power seeded the improvement of trail systems, supply depots, and basic access infrastructure enabling Samuel Stanshaw and other locals to establish cattle grazing and conventional homestead ranch operations alongside their mining operations. The economic evolution seen in much of the Northwest moves from mining with homestead ranching, to logging, to fishing then finally to service industries such as recreation. This evolution of economics and culture is closely mirrored in the history of Marble Mountain Ranch. In the late 1800s, after Samuel Stanshaw took the easier accessed gold oar from his hydraulic mining operations, Mr. Stanshaw leased the mining operations to the same Chinese laborers who had developed the ranch water diversion system. In his lease, Mr. Stanshaw states that "the Indians across the river are to be left alone and not bothered" and that "all meat and eggs must be purchased from the ranch." Anecdotal evidence indicates that Stanshaw had taken a common law Indian wife from a Karuk family villiage located just across the Klamath River from his mining site. We are given just a glimpse of the entrepreneurial spirit of the times and a flavor of his dealings with nearby “in-laws”. The Karuk are still the Native American soverign nation of the mid-Klamath and have survived and matured to a modern people in spite of the disruptive influences of economic and cultural intrusions. Samuel Stanshaw was an austute businessman and entrepeneur. In 1911 his efforts successfully culminated in the patenting of his mining operations with a U.S. Presidential proclamation deeding him the diverted water and canals that carry the water. Marble Mountain Ranch carries this deed signed by President Taft in 1911 and is the site of one of the State’s oldest continuous water rights. |
Strategic Ranch Location Leads To Roll In Road Building, Supply Distribution, Public Education |
| Because of the unique location of Marble Mountain Ranch, in an isolated, rugged and harsh area of the Northwest, it also served as a staging and supply depot for early packers and travelers moving through the Klamath River and Salmon River basins. Marble Mountain Ranch, since the 1900's, has been the home of hydraulic mining, a homestead ranch, logging operations, a blacksmith shop, California State Highway Yard, a feed store, a sport fishing camp, a school house, housing for the U.S. Forest Service, and finally a destination guest resort. Many of our current guest cottages were originally constructed to provide housing for employees of what was a newly established United States Forest Service in 1905. |  |
Marble Mountain Ranch Is Off Grid, Green, And Self Reliant |
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During your stay at the Ranch, you will see the original water diversions that continue to provide hydroelectric power for the Ranch and take a trail ride down into the last remnant of a hydraulic mining pit. This hydropower is now a much more precious commodity than the gold that was it’s original motivation for development. Marble Mountain Ranch continues “off grid” and generates all it’s electricity, as well as it’s domestic and agricultural water from the original water diversions first built to allow mining. You will see giant water cannons (monitors) that once washed away mountains of material, numerous relics from past logging and agricultural operations on the Ranch, our 100-plus year old barn and home, and the original feed and hay store and the site of the Irving Creek School on the South end of the ranch. Unfortunately, not enough is left preserved in record of the Chinese laborers or native Karuk Indians that inhabited the immediate area. |
| Our self sufficiency for power, our 150 year tenure of gardening, ranching, and orchard tending, our “catch and release” guided fishing practices, and our practiced “no impact” wilderness ethic allows us to also make strong claim to “sustainable tourism” in offering our dude ranch vacations. Accordingly, we pledge to follow the principles of the March 1997 Berlin Declaration on Sustainable Tourism. |  |