california history - California Historical Society

Clouds over Red RoofUnable to secure meaningful work, T.C. filled theuntraditional role of his wife’s helpmate and stayat-homehusband. He lived vicariously throughhis sons’ continuing adventures with ranching.Sometime in 1875–76, the Severance brothershad purchased—apparently with the assistanceof their parents—a portion of the Mexican landgrantRancho Muscupiabe, north of San Bernardino.The purchase price was $25,000, andit seems likely that the family had to assume alarge mortgage in order to pay for the 8,900-acreparcel, located about sixty-five miles east of LosAngeles. The timing of the purchase was inauspicious.A severe drought plagued California in thefall and winter of 1876–77, drying up the streamsand creeks on which both sheep and cattle ranchingand the state’s fledgling agricultural industrydepended. The market value of sheep on the hoofdipped to as little as ten cents a head. Unable topay property taxes, the Severances lost the ranchto the state. 57Seymour and Sibley bought the property backin 1878 for $800, but they had little time andmoney to invest in its development. Seymourwas living in Tecopa, California, near the state’sborder with Nevada, working futilely to protectthe family’s ill-advised investment in a miningoperation that had no ready means of transportingits excavated silver and lead ore to the nearestmarkets two hundred miles away. Sibley wasnow married and working as an assistant to theLos Angeles freight agent of the Central PacificRailroad, the California-to-Utah section of thefirst transcontinental railroad. He had met hisbride, Annie Crittenden, when she joined hishorseback-riding set. Annie was a niece of MarkHopkins, one of the “Big Four” builders of theCentral Pacific (along with Leland Stanford, C. P.Huntington, and Charles Crocker), but Sibley hadlanded his job through another connection. T.C.and Caroline lived off their sons’ largesse andcredit from obliging merchants. For a while, thebrothers were stretched so thin it looked as if thefamily might have to give up Red Roof.“[O]ur Los Angeles life is a continual drain &strain, with nothing coming in,” Sibley advisedhis father in May 1879, “& the sooner we put astop to it the better. . . . [B]y next winter or so,I think by all means the place might as wellbe sold . . . and for the present,” he continued,“Mrs. Woodward or Mrs. Lee will have to wait alittle while, does it not seem so to you? See howlong Mrs. W. can wait. And when you do cometo terms or to leaving you must make every centtell & must sell everything not needed, like theextra horses, etc. & not leave a large establishmentat a low price and a great bargain for othersto enjoy.” 58Fortunately for the elder Severances, the upsettingtalk of selling Red Roof came to an end afterSibley helped Seymour obtain full-time employmentwith the Central Pacific. Sibley and Anniedid well enough—he, through promotion tofreight agent in Central Pacific’s Salt Lake Cityoffice, she, through inheritances—to turn RanchoMuscupiabe into their avocation upon theirreturn to southern California. In the late 1890s,the couple built a home on the ranch, set outseveral thousand eucalyptus trees and hundredsof orange and lemon trees, and indulged theirmutual passion for horses by raising Thoroughbreds.Neither racehorses nor citrus farming netteda profit. 59The Severance brothers would have to wait untilSan Bernardino had completed its slow expansionnorthward to their property lines to findbuyers for their land. By the mid-1920s, they hadsold off approximately 6,000 acres to real estatedevelopers, a country club, and the city of SanBernardino (among others). On these sales thebrothers grossed nearly $400,000. After subtractingproperty taxes, the principal and intereston various mortgages, and the cost of improve-California History • volume 88 number 1 2010