Bishop Ranch: Prominent Ranch in the San Ramon Valley
The Bishop name has been a significant one in San Ramon since Thomas Benton Bishop acquired the property in 1895 from the Norris family. Leo and Mary Jane Norris had purchased their 4,550-acre ranch from Jose Maria Amador forty-five years earlier.
Thomas Bishop bought the property after a scandalous divorce case between William and Margaret Norris in which Margaret was represented by an attorney from the San Francisco firm of Garber, Boalt and Bishop. Possibly, Norris land was accepted in payment for services rendered, and Bishop, a partner in the firm, purchased the land from her attorney. Bishop already owned land throughout the west and Mexico. The Norris settlement property was one and a half square miles (960 acres) and extended from Norris Canyon on the west to the Southern Pacific Railroad track on the east.
In 1904, Bishop hired the experienced Frank Rutherford to manage the ranch. Rutherford and James H. Bishop, who became president of the company after his father died in 1906, worked together for forty years. Bishop’s four sons, James, Francis, Edward and Thomas, inherited the estate. The ranch was sometimes called the Bishop Brothers Ranch or the San Ramon Rancho.
James Bishop and his Four Sons
Rutherford brought expertise in the grafting and propagation of different varieties of fruit and nut trees. Orchards of native black walnut trees were planted on the Bishop Ranch beginning in 1909. These young trees were grafted with English varieties three or four years later. As these early plantings succeeded on five hundred acres, many more orchards were planted in the San Ramon and adjacent valleys.
Gradually, the ranch became a huge, successful enterprise, in part because it had the only irrigation in the valley. It had a bunkhouse for about sixty men, barns, machine shops, dehydrator buildings, warehouses and a mess hall. Bartlett pears were planted in 1911, as were peaches, prunes, grapes and tomatoes. From 1900 to 1920, the ranch was well known for its prize-winning pure-bred Shropshire sheep, a project of Edward F. Bishop. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the sheep took double “the number of firsts and as many seconds as all the other exhibitors combined. They also took the honor of Champion Ram, Premier Champion for Exhibitor, and Premier Championship for Breeder.
Here Bishop Brothers Ranch is touted in the Gazette Contra Costa Development newspaper of 1916:
San Ramon Ranch is at once a demonstration of the perfection of natural conditions which exist not only conducive to the live stock industry, but appertaining to horticulture and farming pursuits in general. It is a portrayal of the scenic beauties of this section of the State that is at once a surprise and a delight, for its vast expanse entails the rolling landscape of the foothills and the wealth of Contra Costa valley lands. They are both combined here in perfection.
Evidently, coyotes would come down from the hills and kill the Bishop Ranch lambs and sheep. Rutherford kept six greyhounds to prevent such depredation. If a coyote was spotted, the driver of one of their large steam tractors would blow a whistle. A worker closest to the kennel would release the hounds, which would come tearing out in the direction of the whistle, run down the coyotes and kill them.
It was a diversified and self-sufficient ranch with various fruit crops, walnuts, blooded sheep, hogs, chickens, a large vegetable garden, numerous workers and a variety of ranch buildings. Early experimental mechanical walnut harvesters were also tested in the Bishop orchard. According to Barbara Andreasen Lynch, “There were two migrant worker ‘labor camps’ on the ranch; one was known as the Chinese camp. Each had a communal kitchen and the seasonal canning was done at the labor camp rather than the main crew kitchen.”
Caterpillar D$ tractor rolling land for walnuts
In the late 1940s, the Bishop Ranch (described as 1,300 acres in size) was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest single Bartlett pear orchard in the world; it yielded 2,200 tons one year out of 300 acres. By then, the ranch had three irrigation wells that supported the pears and walnuts. Pears were sent to East Coast markets and to the Del Monte Cannery in Hayward, with small ones sent to the Davis cannery in Walnut Creek to be made into baby food.
Travis and Ruth Boone owned a large spread adjacent to Bishop Ranch, planted primarily with walnuts and tomatoes. Boone did extensive custom grain harvesting in the San Ramon and Tri-Valley area. In a later interview, Ruth Boone recalled that, after bachelor ranch hands were paid, they would often enjoy themselves gambling at a place called Connie’s in San Ramon. She remembered Connie Young telling her, “I made a fortune from the men at the Boone and Bishop Ranches.” And she said he probably was right.
Bishop Ranch workers
Following Rutherford’s retirement in 1944, his son-in-law Vern Andresen became manager, and in 1955, Bob Livermore succeeded him. He was a University of California–Davis graduate with some new ideas for the ranch. Livermore faced a number of challenges. Crop dusting had ended and pests were re-infesting many of the crops. Pear decline and black-line diseases threatened the ranch’s pears and walnuts. In the 1950s, Henry Crown and Co. purchased the property.
The Bay Area’s growth after World War II transformed all of California. In the San Ramon Valley, owners of several historic ranches were confronted with high tax assessments that meant they could not afford to continue ranching. The Baldwin and Meese ranches, which were first settled in 1852, were sold to home developers. Bishop Ranch taxes in 1955 were about $20,000. Ten years later, though, the assessor valued the land for homes and the tax bill skyrocketed
Aerial pictures showed the central position of Bishop Ranch in the ’60s. Its sweeping pear and walnut orchards sat between new developments in South San Ramon and Dublin and a growing Danville to the north. The entire San Ramon Valley expanded from 4,630 people in 1950 to 57,307 in 1980. New residents soon began to want more control of these burgeoning developments, and incorporation efforts began in the 1960s with three unsuccessful San Ramon Valley–wide city votes. Whether to include the Bishop Ranch property within the proposed city boundary was debated in each of these elections. The life of Bishop Ranch as the agricultural center of San Ramon ended when Western Electric purchased the 1,733-acre property from Crown Enterprises in 1969 and proceeded to plan for a “new town” development.
Sources: San Ramon Chronicles, Stories of Bygone Days, by Beverly Lane. Archives in the MuseumSRV.