JOHN MARSH’S LEGACY Current Status of an East County Historical Treasure
	September 2005

by Kathy Leighton
Photos by Russell Byrne

The John Marsh House is a premier East County historical treasure. The beautiful house was built in 1856 — only 16 years after the first trace of gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, near Sacramento, and a mere six years after statehood.

The completion of Marsh’s house would serve as the climax of almost two decades of dramatic and even epochal events that would be associated with the life of this remarkable man. Fifteen years earlier, for example, John Marsh had welcomed the first wagon train to arrive in the State of California led by a wagon master named John Bidwell.

We tend to romanticize our history — and to create for ourselves “a past made simple through the loss of detail,” as Frost put it. I find it interesting that before I learned about history on a deeper level, I imagined scenes like John Wayne riding in a covered wagon complete with cute little girls in gingham dresses. The reality was that the remnants of the Bidwell party ended up limping into Brentwood on foot, holding together the remnants of their ripped clothing, having left their wagons and furnishings behind them to rot on the bones of the Rockies and the salt pans of Utah.

“Help yourself to a cow,” Marsh told his hungry visitors. John Bidwell himself shot Marsh’s prize breeding ox and, in a fit of temper, Marsh ordered him off the property. That was the beginning of hard feelings between the two that lasted the rest of Marsh’s life. Bidwell subsequently became a key person in the development of the area and in later years people writing the history of the European immigration often interviewed him.

“History is written by the survivors,” to paraphrase a famous quote, and Bidwell outlived Marsh by 30 years. He took advantage of that long intervening period to denigrate Marsh’s character. For example, he was widely quoted as saying, “John Marsh was the meanest man I ever met,” However, his judgment was too harsh. We should give a break to both of the men in the incident. Marsh had simply over-reacted to a deed that was stupid but not malicious. After all, Bidwell was only 21 years old at the time.

John Marsh should be given a place of honor in our history because of the amazing number of “firsts” that are associated with his name. Just off the top of my head I can come up with nine:

• First doctor to come to California
• First graduate of Harvard University to reside in California
• First European to reside permanently in Contra Costa County
• Planted the area’s first orchards and vineyards
• Planted the first cornfield
• Conducted the first PR campaign to lure people to California
• Greeted the first wagon train to arrive in California
• First Contra Costa County rancher
• Built the area’s first European-style house

The First Ranch
The last two items on the list, rancher and homebuilder, are possibly John Marsh’s most extraordinary accomplishments. In 1937 he purchased more than 17,000 acres from Jose Noriega for $500, which came out to not quite three cents an acre. Money was worth a lot more in 1837 than today, of course, but getting three acres of land for a dime was an awfully good deal even in those days. The land measured 10 by 12 miles and it would have taken Marsh a couple days simply to ride around his holdings.

The contract was written before official area surveys were completed and so contains the provision that the area purchased would extend, “From the shadow of Mt. Diablo to the river.” We can be especially impressed by the size of the ranch when we realize that the “shadow of Mt. Diablo to the river” encompassed present day Oakley, Antioch, Brentwood, Discovery Bay, and Byron. Marsh named his huge property “Rancho Los Meganos,” or “The Sand Dunes Ranch.”

Of course, the land transfer was undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the Miwok and Yokut Indian tribes who had been living on the land for at least centuries, and perhaps for a millennium. In all honesty, we should acknowledge that Marsh didn’t involve the native inhabitants in his land transaction for what certainly seemed the perfectly sufficient reason that they didn’t any more consider themselves to own the land they lived on than he did. He could have as easily purchased the land from the trees.

Marsh actually respected his Native American neighbors and took the effort to learn their language and to become acquainted with their culture and customs. The business of Rancho Los Meganos and the village life of the various Indian groups was conducted in perfect harmony, apparently. His wife, Abby, wrote,

About 20 men, women, and children live in huts a few yards from our door. They are great service to us.... They are faithful servants and I think a great deal of them. Not a day passes but two or three or six Indian women come to see me, they speak the Spanish language of which I am able to speak a little...”

The Indians who live on our rancho almost worship our daughter — they think she is a perfect little beauty.… Some of them have lived with the Doctor from his first arriving into the country.… I often go see them and carry them medicine when they are sick, they now have the chills and fever a great many of them would die if left to themselves...

The people who Marsh would have real trouble with were the European squatters who began moving into the area, building homes, fencing land, and especially killing his cattle. He and the local Indian tribes were united in a sense, since those interlopers brought with them the cultural and economic pressures that eventually destroyed both the Native American society of the local Indian groups, as well as the large-ranch society that “Rancho Los Meganos” belonged to.

East County was a wild place when John Marsh set up housekeeping. On December 5, 1850, for example, a band of outlaws conducted what might have been the county’s first home invasion. They took Marsh captive, stole gold, watches, and guns, and put to death an unresisting guest of Marsh as a simple random act of violence. His wife, Abby, wrote to her relatives the plaintive words, “Here the thieves and vagabonds are like wolves waiting to tear you in pieces if you do not keep a sharp look out for them.”

The authorities were useless to stem the growing squatter population who used bribery and jury tampering to frustrate any legal action taken against them. When Marsh organized vigilantes to do what the law was too corrupt to do, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit assault and fined $500, though a later court overturned the judgment.

Marsh built his first ranch house in the neighborhood of an Indian village and employed the aid of his neighbors in the construction. The structure looked nothing like ranch houses depicted in Hollywood TV shows like Bonanza or How Big is my Valley. It was a small, one-story adobe structure. The main room had a dirt floor and a fire pit. There were three other small rooms and an attic where a couple ranch hands would sleep. It was “Four rooms and a path,” as the old joke used to run.

The little adobe dwelling eventually became a popular center for the area. The small house served as unofficial mail center. Frequent visitors included John Fremont, John Sutter, James Kirker, John Gantt, Gen. Mariano Vallejo, Kit Carson, and others. It became an essential rendezvous point between Sutter’s Fort in Sacramento and San Francisco.

The First Homely House
Marsh never planned to live in that adobe hovel forever. Most of us associate John Marsh with the remarkable home he left behind. My husband and I have owned a construction business for over three decades and it is still difficult for me to imagine how Marsh could have created a home in the middle of the wilderness that East County was at that time. And it is simply impossible for me to imagine how he ever managed to build the elegant home that he built. The John Marsh house is a 3-story high, 7,000 square foot structure, with a fourth story watchtower. Marsh built it out of stacked limestone slabs faced on the inside with adobe bricks. He mined the building materials from beds of adobe and limestone on his property.

The structure actually has double limestone walls, with an airspace trapped between the inner and outer walls. The design of the walls would have cooled the house in the summer and warmed it in the winter. The final cost for the construction was $20,000. This seems like a paltry sum to us, but consider that it was 40 times the amount that he had paid for the 17,000-acre property.

Not only did Marsh build the large, elegant edifice with the primitive tools and untrained labor that was available to him at that time, but he apparently created the specification for the structure himself. The house was characterized by steep Gothic gables, impressive stone walls, and a veranda that wrapped all the way around three sides of the house. The interior of the house was accessible from the veranda by way of a set of French doors. One feature of the house that was very forward-looking for its time was a set of large closets that were placed with great style between the two master bedrooms.

I find it amazing that the first house built by a European in Contra Costa County would have been an appropriate candidate for a Better Homes and Gardens article of that day. Where are the missing stages that should have marked the development of the area’s European building industry? For Marsh to build his large, stately, and lovely edifice as the area’s first house was like Thomas Edison inventing a digital movie projector. It’s bewildering!

The story of the history of the Marsh house would make a good plot for a Hollywood tragedy. Marsh built it in honor of his beloved wife, Abby Tuck who died before the building was completed. A letter to her family shortly after her marriage contained the simple and poignant words, “Next year he intends to build a house. There is a house here, but not one that he wants me to live in.” Abby, of course, never lived to see the house and Marsh himself only lived in the building for a couple weeks before disgruntled workers murdered him and stole his money.

Note that you can visit the site of Marsh’s death. A plaque across the street from 4575 Pacheco Boulevard, Martinez, marks the official site.

John & Abby’s little daughter, Alice, who was a small child when her mother died, grew up, married a Bay Area lawman named Will Camron, and created a spacious estate on 3,000 acres in an unnamed region of the Bay Area. Alice herself, resolved the “unnamed” problem by giving the area the name Orinda. Following a series of setbacks, tragedies, and a divorce, Alice changed her name from Camron to Cameron, ran a boarding house in San Francisco, and died in 1927.

Bringing Hope to a Sad Ruin
The Marsh House is currently in an advanced state of ruin. One of the walls collapsed more than 20 years ago. The structure is propped up with large supports and some of the supports were wearing out with age until we recently replaced them. Portions of the walls have been replaced and a temporary roof put on to protect interior structures from the weather.

The stately John Marsh house is too wonderful a treasure to end up as rubble in some landfill. In the early 1970s Bob Gromm provided the initial impetus for saving the John Marsh House. We’ve been working for 30 years to develop a program for the property’s restoration and redevelopment. For most of that time we’ve felt like Don Quixote as we fruitlessly tilted against the truly enormous windmills of state bureaucratic inertia and confusion.

One thing that held us up is that the property has been owned by the State of California since the late 1970s. We were required to shift ownership from California to California State Parks before anything could be done. The process required over 20 years of steady pressure and attention. It would never have happened without Sen. Tom Torlakson’s assistance. He was a key player in helping this to final success.

At last we are able to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Important players at the table have been lurking in the shadows for many years, but now are beginning to take an active role in the process. During the past few years energy and commitment from the City and State Parks have begun to seriously address the issues.

Major stabilization efforts have been made to prevent the entire edifice from collapsing into a heap of rubble. It is difficult not to be annoyed by the delays but we are impressed by the progress now being made. We have never been discouraged about the house itself. The foundation and most of the load-bearing structures are absolutely sound. Walls remain standing, for the most part, and are as plumb as the day they were built.

We’ve recently completed a set of emergency repairs through a joint-effort of John Marsh Historic Trust Funds and State Parks and Recreation Stewardship Grant Funds, for a grand total of 273 thousand dollars. The state engineers have been remarkable in their efforts with such innovative thinking as taking sand from the property to make grouting. The progress has been unbelievable! Much of the current emergency repair work is excellent enough that it will remain as part of the completed property.

Not Just the House
Our plans go beyond merely refurnishing and refurbishing the house; we want to create a multi-use site and a real cultural center. We know where the Marsh adobe stood, for example and hope to rebuild it. We have drawings of the building, and descriptions written by his wife.

We also want to reproduce a living Indian village on the site and plant crops according to the early agriculture. A junior college will adjoin the house property. As with most things in life, the timing is essential. The Vineyards of Marsh Creek project being built on the borders of the property is creating important infrastructure changes, which is bringing the City of Brentwood to the table, as well. They now see the John Marsh development as complementary to the city development.

The next step requires a general plan, which must be funded by the John Marsh Trust and the City of Brentwood. The state will not fund the project until the general plan is in place.

In October we’re having a fundraiser — the John Marsh Trust, raising funds for the general plans, engineering, and further stabilization. We’re hoping to have a dinner on the site.

John Marsh was a complicated individual who accomplished an immense amount during the course of his young life.

It is fitting that we pursue the John Marsh House Restoration project to its conclusion in honoring his life and in keeping alive a sense of the rich history belonging to our wonderful East County.