Glen Oaks Ranch

Glen Oaks Ranch is a 143-acre agricultural district at Glen Ellen, in Sonoma County's Valley of the Moon. Its centerpiece is a two-story stone house built in 1870 for Charles V. Stuart, using stone quarried on the property. Nearby are a stone barn, a stone smokehouse, a Craftsman bungalow, a foreman's house from about 1930, a river rock gateway and a wooden bridge on dry stone abutments. The grounds also hold gardens and the ruins of a winery. Stuart planted one of the early non-Mission grape vineyards and employed Chinese workers, whom he defended as a delegate to the 1878 state constitutional convention. After his death in 1880, his widow Ellen Stuart ran the winery for about a decade, and the town of Glen Ellen was named for her. Later owners added farm buildings, orchards and recreational structures. The ranch was listed for its architecture, as the most intact agricultural complex of its kind in the valley, and for its association with the Stuarts.