Beltane Ranch: From ‘Dusty Place’ to ‘Mammy’s Place’

Beltane Ranch, Glen Ellen (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2009)

Before there was a Glen Ellen, much of Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon was part of the 18,833-acre Rancho Los Guilucos. The rancho—its name was later corrupted to Guilicos—was granted in 1837 by Gov. Juan Bautista Alvarado to John Wilson and his wife, Ramona Carrillo, sister-in-law of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo.

In the late 1870s, Captain John Hamilton Drummond established his Dunfillan Vineyard on 150 acres of the rancho. After his death, the land was acquired by the wealthiest black woman in San Francisco, Mary Ellen Pleasant, widely known as “Mammy” Pleasant and now called the “Mother of Civil Rights in California.”

Read the whole story here.