Welcome to Beauty Ranch

In June 1911, Jack London heartily sick of living in makeshift accomodations at Wake Robin, and seeing that the Wolf House would not be completed for at least another two years, made a move that brought him the happiest and richest years of his life; he bought ten acres in the middle of the Kohler vineyards upon which stood an abandoned winery, a broken-down ranch house, and some barns. He put stone masons and carpenters to work adding a comfortable dining room with a huge fireplace, and a broad lounging verandah, then enlarged the kitchen and renewed the bedrooms and sleeping porches. One of the bedrooms he converted into a workshop, lining the walls with shelves for his books and papers and cardboard reference boxes. His small, screened sleeping porch overlooked a secluded tropical garden in front of the house, the rear lounging verandah overlooked a spacious yard and huge barn, part of which he turned into nine comfortable guest rooms for his friends. Nakata became general manager, employing two more Japanese to cook and keep the house clean.

The ranch house was a success from the beginning; it was informal and people could have fun in it. When living at Wake Robin he filled the cabins, tents, and every spare cot with his friends and intimates: George Sterling, Cloudesley Johns, James Hopper, his socialist and anarchist friends, newspapermen, sailors, tramps, and comrades that fitted into no apparent category. Nearly everyone in the artistic, professional, or thinking world that came West spent a few days at what he called Beauty Ranch. In all the tens of thousands of letters he sent out from the ranch, and a goodly portion were to people who were quarreling with him, attacking, or abusing him, he never failed to put at the end, "The latch string is always on the outside at the Beauty Ranch".