Hiking along a nature trail at Mount Madonna County Park on
Saturday, I came upon the ruins of the Henry Miller estate near the
park headquarters.
Hiking along a nature trail at Mount Madonna County Park on Saturday, I came upon the ruins of the Henry Miller estate near the park headquarters.
Like some medieval fortress, the foundation stones and stair steps of the summer home of the “Cattle King” are now overgrown with shrubs and redwood trees. But photos on an information marker show it once was an attractive mansion.
In my imagination, I removed the foliage and rebuilt the walls and roofs, including the 3,600-square-foot ballroom used for entertaining. And then I peopled the home with the Miller family, I pictured Victorian carriages pulled by fine horses and children scampering among the adults. For a moment, I envisioned Miller – who was described as resembling President Ulysses S. Grant – troding up the long cement stairway to the porch overlooking Santa Clara Valley.
Most people associate the name Henry Miller with the writer of such novels as “The Tropic of Capricorn.” That Miller lived in Big Sur south of the Monterey Peninsula. Gilroy’s Henry Miller was another man entirely – and just as colorful. Gilroy’s Miller was a 19th century German immigrant who arrived in California during the Gold Rush with $6 in his pocket. By 1900, he accumulated a fortune of $50 million and owned more land than any single man in history.
Born Heinrich Alfred Kreiser in the Brackenheim hills of Germany, he immigrated to New York and became a butcher boy, selling meat door-to-door. In 1850, at the age of 23, he journeyed through the Isthmus of Panama to San Francisco, using the ticket of a shoe salesman named Henry Miller. The ticket was nontransferable, so he boarded the ship as Henry Miller. (Eight years later, he legalized the name.)
When Miller reached California, instead of heading to the gold fields, he realized a good living could be made butchering the wild longhorn cattle roaming the hills. He supplied the miners with meat and saved his money as he built his business.
In 1852, he purchased 300 oxen from Livingston and Kincaid – the first American cattle to arrive in San Francisco. American cattle meat was preferred over the tougher California longhorn, and Miller rode the boom as the price rose from $2 to as much as $40 per head.
To expand his business, he decided to buy a ranch near the town of Los Banos in the San Joaquin Valley. Miller traveled the El Camino Real through Santa Clara Valley, seeing the fertile region for the first time and passing by Rancho Las Animas. Crossing over the Indian trail through Pacheco Pass, Miller bought the Los Banos ranch and began building his empire.
Not only did he sell the meat from his cattle, he also sold the leather hides as well as the tallow fat to make soap and candles. As his fortune grew, he bought the Rancho Las Animas near Gilroy, establishing his headquarters at a site he called Bloomfield Ranch, near the overpass where today’s Highway 25 meets U.S. 101. (The first Gilroy Garlic Festival was held at the field in front of this home.)
Miller continued buying land – which was relatively cheap in the West at that time, only a few cents per acre. Besides thousands of acres in California, he bought land in Nevada and Oregon. He eventually owned 1.5 million acres and controlled an additional 14.5 million acres – an area larger than Belgium.
Miller enjoyed traveling over his cattle empire, spending time with the cowboys who worked for him. One of my favorite stories about the Cattle King was about his encounter with a bandit (some say it was the infamous Joaquin Murietta) who was terrorizing the Central Coast region. Miller was riding to the mission town of San Juan Bautista when the bandit ambushed him and took all his money. To have cash to buy food on the trip, Miller asked for a “loan” of $20. The surprised thief gave back $20 of Miller’s own money.
Two years later, while Clarence Fagalde – one of Miller’s foremen – was driving him in a carriage, Miller happened to see the outlaw who had robbed him. The land baron shouted, “Fagalde, stop! I owe that man some money.” And he repaid his “debt” of $20.
Miller had a reputation for being a frugal man who made no pretense of being a land baron. He was well-respected in the Gilroy community and often invited the locals up to his Mount Madonna estate for famous barbecues – everyone in town was invited. He donated money to community causes including providing $300,000 in his will to build the Las Animas Hospital in Gilroy.
On Oct. 4, 1917, Henry Miller died at the age of 89 in the Menlo Park home of his daughter, Nellie Nickel. He wanted to be buried in a mausoleum on his beloved Mount Madonna estate, but Nellie chose to cremate his body.
Some locals say the Mount Madonna ruins are haunted by Miller’s ghost. As I gazed at his summer estate site, envisioning the Victorian mansion as it had stood a century or so ago, the wind suddenly gusted up. It made a tranquil sound as it breezed through redwood branches. It made me hope that Miller’s ghost does indeed haunt the place. I’m sure his spirit would be happy to dwell in such a serene natural setting.
