A Short History of Olompali

The name Olompali comes from the lost Coast Miwok language and likely means
southern village or southern people, states the Olompali State Historical
Park's brochure.  It has been in existence since 500 A.D.  It was a major
Miwok center in 1,200 A.D. and seems to have been one of the largest in
Marin County.  The modern history of Olompali begins as the Spanish move north
into California, building their missions.

In 1828, expansion of Mission San Rafael Arcangel, just ten miles south of
Olompali, was underway.  It is reasonable to believe that the Miwoks at Olompali
learned adobe construction methods at this time.  In a letter from Padre Amoros,
dated 1828, a small house is noted at Olompali.  This is the first of two
adobes on the village site.  It was the home of the hoipu, or head man, of
Olompali and the father of Camillo Ynitia, who was to be the last hoipu of the
village.  It is disputed whether the first adobe was dismantled to provide
bricks for Camillo's adobe at about 1837.  The second adobe, whose remains are
still visible, measured 24 x 16 feet, 8 feet high with 3 foot thick walls.  It
had a thatch roof of salt marsh tulles.  Its long axis is north-south.  An
adobe addition was made in 1840.  The addition is at right angles and is
attached on the west wall to form an "L" -shaped structure of three rooms.
This is the only adobe home in Marin county; its remains are protected within
the Olompali state park.

In October 1843, General Mariano Vallejo petitioned the governor of the Mexican
province of Alta California, Micheltorena, to grant 8,900 acres to Camillo
Ynitia, who had become a Christian.  The site of the village became known as
Rancho Olompali.

Ynitia traded wheat with the Russians at Fort Ross and livestock with
the Mexicans at Sonoma.  He was the only native American holding both Mexican
and U.S. government land grants in northern California.  Ynitia was a cultural
link between the California Indians and the Californios.  He was respected as
being "fine, intelligent, shrewd, clean-cut, capable, and punctual".

During the "Bear Flag Revolt", on June 24 1846, the "Battle of Olompali"
occurred when a violent skirmish broke out between a troop of American Bear
Flaggers from Sonoma and a Mexican force of 50 from Monterey, under the command
of Joaquin de la Toree, at Ynitia's adobe.  Several men were wounded and one
man was reportedly killed, the only fatality associated with the brief
California revolution. 

After California was annexed by the United States following the Mexican War,
many land grant holders were forced off their lands by the new government.  In
1852 Ynitia sold most of his land to James Black, who later became one of the
largest landowners in Marin county.  Ynitia faded into history, and died a few
years later.

The history of Rancho Olompali then became entangled in the lives of James
Black, his daughter, Mary, and his daughter's husband, Dr. Galen Burdell.
Herein is their tale:

James Black was born in Scotland.  At 20 he shipped out on a Hudson's Bay
vessel, but at Monterey he was put ashore with typhoid fever.  He was married,
had a child, and was widowed; he brought home a fortune of gold from the gold
fields; he was elected tax assessor of Marin County in 1852; and he became one
of the most influential men in the county.

Mary was the only child of James Black, who later married Maria Pacheco.
Maria's first husband, Ignacio Pacheco, had married three times.  "He rode in
a saddle encrusted with silver and gold," Jack Mason tells us in Early Marin.
James had been an acquaintance of Maria's for 22 years. The interesting thing
about the marriage was that it took a dispensation from Father Lootens, because
Black had been court-appointed guardian to her three minor children.

The marriage was ill-fated from the start. Black could read but barely write
and he was not his bride's social equal, for she was a Durante and had been
brought up in wealth.

Mary's marriage to Galen Burdell in 1863 introduced new tensions into Black's
and Mrs. Pacheco's marriage.  Dr. Burdell had reached San Francisco the long
way around (via Cape Horn).  He had first been trained in New York City and
went to Brazil, but he had been lured north by the Gold Rush.  He had sailed
into San Francisco as ship's surgeon on the Dunsbury, which later had a reef
named after it.  He was well to do, having invented a tooth powder.

Sometime after their marriage a tragedy occurred.  Mrs. Pacheco died in Dr.
Burdell's dental chair.  Although the dentist was absolved of blame, Mary's
father could not forgive him.  He said, "I don't want Dr. Burdell's name or
Mary's included in my will," according to Mason.  However, he had given Mary
Olompali Ranch on her wedding day in 1863.

Black then started drinking. Visits to Mary's father were an ordeal. Mary's
pregnancy seemed to make him worse.  "Black continued to ride about his
property on horseback, often too inebriated to sit in the saddle," wrote Mason.
"Late in 1869 he took a particularly bad spill, suffering a two-inch wound at
the base of his skull.  Softening of the brain followed, but he was still able
to get about."  Later, he died in convulsions so terrible an onlooker thought
he had been poisoned.

The 1880 History of Marin said of him, "The leaves of the great book of life
closed and another of California's oldest pioneers has passed from time to
eternity."

Black's death brought family passions to the surface.  Dr. Burdell had gone to
the reading of the will at the Pacheco House, while Mary stayed outside. "Later
that evening, he brought an attorney to read the will in a private suite of a
San Rafael hotel.  When the attorney left the room, Mary tore her father's
signature off with her teeth, apparently swallowing it, since it was never
found.  She was arrested but quickly released, a story that was given
sensational treatment in the San Francisco press," Mason wrote.

Retribution was only possible in a court of law.  Mary hired three top
attorneys and filed her contest in probate court in 1870.  She claimed her
father's mind had been influenced by his drinking, and he had been under the
influence of his wife, Mrs. Pacheco.  Mary asked for a jury trial and got it.
Persons known to Mary testified against her father, and she won her case.

Mrs. Pacheco turned to good works after the trial, and built the San Jose
district's first school house.  She spent her winters in San Francisco.  One of
her children, Qumesido Pacheco, was Marin County supervisor for more than nine
years.  He built a house on Highway 101 just south of the main gate to Hamilton
Field.  It still stands.

Galen and Mary now concentrated on Olompali.  The 20,000 acres, ranging from
Tomales Bay to San Pablo Bay, included large portions of Novato and Nicasio.
"Here the retired dentist found ample outlets for his inventive mind.  On the
San Pablo Bay he ran his own soil reclamation project.  His orchards were of
many kinds of fruit: apple, pear, quince, fig, pomegrante, persimmon, apricot,
peach and plum.  Fifty acres were planted in 30 varieties of grapes, a kind of
experimental vineyard with "a hint of noble wines to come."  Dr. Burdell's
banana trees did poorly, but his 200 orange trees were the equal of any in
Los Angeles, Jack Mason wrote.

Mary's property was hers alone, 950 acres at the head of Tomales Bay, once
known as the Stocker Ranch.  It soon became Point Reyes Station once the North
Pacific Coast Railway came into being.  Dr. Burdell managed the ranch.

"Mary Burdell, an energetic as her husband, planted the first ambitious garden
in the county," wrote Mason.  When she traveled to Japan, Mary brought home the
first planting of exotics to the county.  Mary was a perfectionist in social
etiquette.  The tablecloth had to be of the finest linen, the silverware
polished to the nth degree.  She and her husband played lady and lord of the
manor.  Every Christmas they would deliver turkeys to their friends, and Galen
would leave a gold watch at every home they visited.

Mary suffered with gallstones.  In 1900, an operation could be put off no
longer.  She made out her will.  Her estate was to be divided three ways
between her husband Galen, her son James, and daughter Mabel.  She died during
the operation.

Son James made major renovations at Olompali, transforming it into a palatial
country estate, including a 26-room mansion and a Victorian formal garden
complete with fountains, brick walkways and gazebos.  The estate remained in
the Burdell family until it was sold to Court Harrington in 1943.  Shortly
therafter Harrington sold the property to the University of San Francisco as a
Jesuit retreat.

During the 1960s, the University of San Francisco sold Olompali several times.
Each time, the buyers defaulted and the property reverted back to the
university.  The most famous tenant was the rock band Grateful Dead, who lived
here in 1966.  During the Dead's brief stay it became a gathering place for
San Francisco's rock musicians, including Janis Joplin and Grace Slick.

Don McCoy leased Olompali in 1967 and turned it into a hippie commune called
The Chosen Family.  The mansion was destroyed by a fire caused by faulty wiring
in 1969, exposing the remains of the old adobe walls.  The remnants of three
earlier buildings are contained within the remains of the mansion - the
original Camillo Ynitia Adobe, an adobe add-on from the 1850s, and the 1866
Galen Burdell clapboard ranch house.  Camillo Ynitia's Adobe was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

In 1977, the State of California purchased Rancho Olompali and made it into a
state historical park.  The Burdell two-story frame house, built in the 1870s
 serves as the Ranger Station. Associated ranch buildings include barns, a
blacksmith shop, a saltbox house and a ranch superintendent's house. 

An Elizabethan silver sixpence minted in 1567 was discovered in the park by
archeologists, indicating that villagers had contact with Sir Francis Drake or
with people who had traded with the early English explorer.  Many Miwok
cultural artifacts have been identified during archaeological studies within
the area of the present-day park, indicating this may have once been an
important trade and cultural crossroads. 

Sources:

"Olompali Park Filled With History" by Joan Reutinger, The Coastal Post -
September, 1997 

"Historic Spots in California." by Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch
and Ethel Grace Rensch, Stanford University Press, Stanford California, 1966