Patterson, George Washington, Ranch-Ardenwood

Ardenwood is a 131-acre district in Fremont that preserves the heart of a once vast ranch founded by George W. Patterson, a Forty-Niner who began ranching in Alameda County about 1851. At its center is the Patterson House, begun around 1856 as a small two-story redwood farmhouse and enlarged over time. A large Queen Anne addition of 1883 more than doubled its size, adding a corner tower, a horseshoe-arched entrance, decorative shingles and a colored glass and stucco frieze. Another wing followed about 1910-1914. Around the house stand six historic outbuildings, including a sandstone milk house, barns and a garage, along with a quarter-mile driveway lined with walnut and oak trees and a wide variety of planted specimens. By 1878 Patterson was the county's largest landholder, and the ranch employed many laborers, mostly Chinese. The surviving complex shows how a rural family home and farm grew over about sixty years, and it is considered one of the finest ranch complexes of its period in the county.