Guided Hike to Lester Ranch Site, San Miguel Island, California

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NOTE: Due to unexploded ordnance, visitors must be accompanied by a ranger to this location. Entering this area without a ranger is a violation of federal law. Before you are the ruins of the island's largest ranch house. Work began on this new house in 1906. It was constructed out of materials salvaged from shipwrecks around the island - most of it from the lumber schooner the J.M. Coleman which had gone aground inside Point Bennett in 1905. The house was 125 feet long and 16 feet wide with double-walls to withstand the strong winds. A blacksmith shop/harness room, tool shed, well, cistern, and root cellar were also constructed.Unfortunately, the ranch house burned down in 1967 when the Navy inadvertently started a fire during weapons testing. All that remains today is what you see before you-piles of rubble, hardware and metal pieces, two cement-lined excavations considered to be a cistern and a root cellar, collapsed chimney and fireplace, and the remains of a fig tree.

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