The Shinn Ranch in remote eastern Lassen County is not a place one just happens upon. It has been close to twenty years since I was last there with a film crew doing an episode of Off Road California. I have been curious as to what damage it sustained in the 2013 Rush Fire.
It was in 1870, when fifty-year old Oliver Shinn located there with his family of five children from Baker, Oregon. He remained there until his sudden death in 1883. According to his obituary, “Mr. Shinn was awakened from a sound sleep at about 10 o’clock Thursday night by coughing and upon getting out of bed, dropped dead on the floor. It seems that he troubled an aneurism of the pulmonary artery and in his efforts to clear his throat this was ruptured, causing instant death.” The following year, his widow, Louisa Shinn sold the 640-acre ranch to George D. Winters for at that time a substantial sum of $6,000. The Winters family had extensive holdings, which included the nearby Smoke Creek Ranch.
One of the interesting features found there was a grove of cottonwood trees that encompassed some fifteen acres. The trees were planted by Winters in 1889 in order to increase his property holdings there. On April 3, 1893, Winters was issued a 160-acre land patent that he filed under a section of the Timber Culture Act “to encourage growth of timber on the Western Prairie.”
While Oliver and Louisa Shinn kept a low profile, their children did not. More about that in the near future.
Hello Tim! I hope that you are recovering and doing well, I am so glad to see that you are able to keep up your awesome work on our local history! But anyway, from what I read on a fire incident web site at the time, only one barn or outbuilding of some kind was lost in the Rush fire at Shinn ranch. I have never been to the old ranch, thank you so much for your photo and info, local history should be treated like the treasure that it is.
Recovery, slow but sure. Working on graduating to a cane from a walker. One of the items that made Shinn Ranch so impressive was the grove of cottonwood trees. From what I have been told the trees were destroyed in the fire, though its been not from the most reliable of sources.
TIM, THE BARN IN THE BACKGROUND OF YOUR PICTURE WAS BURNT TO THE GROUND DURING THE FIRE. TO THE BEST OF MY RECOLLECTION SOME OF THE COTTONWOODS DID TAKE ON EXTENSIVE DAMAGE, BUT SOME LOOKED AS THOUGH THEY MIGHT COME BACK. I THINK WE WERE OUT THERE IN MID 2014 TO CHECK IT OUT. SO GLAD TO HEAR YOU ARE DOING BETTER.
Hi Tim,
Glad to hear your recovery has you increasingly mobile. Great photo and interesting to learn how Oliver died. Louisa was a well-off widow!