Welcome to the Allen Sphinx Ranch! - Historical Entrance Drive

We start our journey back 140 years with a carriage ride any visitor would follow the old road to Fair Oaks ranch out of Pasadena and upon turning up the drive that became pepper street, would be immediately greeted with tidy orchards and the smell of citrus. On your left heading up the hill is a stand of native oak trees with pumpkins planted between them.  The aroma of mature oranges and lemons in a 5 and a half acre orchard adjoining them and on your west as you trot up the drive bring a smile to your face. Newly planted and knee sized orange seedlings neatly lie in tidy rows just east of the lower drive and stretching north to a stately residence up the hill a stone's throw. 

A few hundred yards uphill and we arrive just below where Berendo street is now and the place where William built a palatial home for his family in 1880.  The street does not perfectly align with the short road up the hill as it once was, but it is surprisingly close, honoring a graceful curve that existed in the old drive to this very day. To our right, a two story home with wrap around balcony in the victorian style would be decorated with the large Allen family on the porches in greeting. Shaded by pepper trees on the west side, it looked over the southeastern corner of the ranch and its orchards and mature vineyards.

The home took about six months to build and the family came down from San Francisco to stay first at the Pico House in downtown Los Angeles and then the Sierra Madre Villa Hotel so they could be short ride away while hammers echoed across Eaton Canyon.

William had purchased the ranch from a settler named Edwards who had planted some additional grapes to compliment the rows Eaton had started a decade before. Edwards sold the ranch and left town in a hurry when the local community continued to grumble about a fire he had started to burn underbrush which had gotten out of control and burned through neighboring properties. Allen was as welcomed as the anguished Edwards was persona non grata!

Remembering his ride with Shorb to the property for the first time, William Allen wrote in 1878:

"The only suitable place I have seen thus far is that of 200 acres some 12 miles off. There is plenty of scope for improvement and close to it at one part are some 4,000 odd acres which might I think be had at a low price, burt then as there is no water on it, it is not worth much. It would however be a capital place for calloping about on and one would not fee so shut in with such a place near as if the land were all enclosed with fences and hedges. There are noneexcept around some gardens and orchards."

He left to return to England without purchasing the land, rather, he contacted an agent in Los Angeles to pursue his interests before he left. He ended up getting a favorable price and made the purchase for the initial 200 acres in July of 1879 for 18,000 dollars in gold coin. In November of the same year, he bought another 250 acres from his neighbor James Craig.

The family first lived downtown in Los Angeles at the Pico house but eventually came out to stay at the Sierra Madre Villa Hotel, a short ride from the new property and home under construction.