history
Switzer Farm in the early 1900s
The region where Switzer Farm is located is part of the ancestral homelands of the Coast Yuki/Ukhotno'm people.
Switzer Farm itself started in 1871, when George Switzer bought the land from Samuel and Lloyd Beall, the first known European inhabitants of the area. At this time, the village of Westport was known as Beall's Landing. George had immigrated from Kingston, Ontario, Canada in the early 1860s to search for gold in Gold Hill, Nevada, and in Eastern California. Like most other gold miners, he was unsuccessful.
So George Switzer changed course and began cutting and selling lumber to miners. By 1871 George decided to move to the Mendocino coast, in northern California, and resume doing what he knew best from his days in Canada: farming. The land that George purchased from the Bealls was over 1,000 acres in size, spanning far south and east of Switzer Farm’s current 22-acre parcel.
The first buildings George Switzer built were the two barns that are still standing today.
George was soon joined by his brothers, Peter and Albert Switzer. Together, they lived in the old house that Sam Beall had inhabited in what is now Switzer Farm's north field. George sold the farm to Albert and Peter in 1876 and moved to Mendocino to start a livery stable business.
Albert and Peter Switzer built the farmhouse that now stands on the property. The farmhouse was finished in 1884, after which then demolished the old Beall house.
Albert married Clara, and they adopted and raised two girls, Abigail and Evangeline, in the farmhouse.
The Switzer family farmed the land, raising sheep, dairy cows, and all varieties of crops including fruits, potatoes, peas, and other vegetables.
During that time, Westport was the largest town between San Francisco and Eureka, with over 1,000 residents, 12 saloons, and numerous hotels.
Westport's "chutes" consisted of complexly engineered steel and cable contraptions that spanned the shoreline and several rock outcroppings into the ocean, enabled the loading of materials, especially lumber and bark cut from the Mendocino forests. The supplies and people on and off ships docked in the ocean and made Westport an important shipping destination.
Lumber felled from the then-abundant forests of Mendocino County largely built San Francisco from the 1870s to the 1900s, and Westport was a key part of that process.
Switzer Farm circa early 1960s
In 1904 the Switzers sold the property to George Fee, who farmed the land for more than 40 years and raised a large family in the farmhouse. The Fees were important members of the Westport community, and the house is still known locally as “the Fee mansion.”
Over the years pieces of the property were sold, leaving the current lot size at about 22 acres.
In the 1950s and 1960s the house fell into disrepair.
In 1964 Fran DuBois, professor of agriculture at the University of California at Davis, purchased it. Fran rehabilitated the house, adding a new foundation, electrical system, garage, and garden shed.
The Tamate-Weisses bought the property from the DuBois heirs in 2015 and began restoring it faithfully to its original condition. Restoration included all new windows and doors on the west side, intended to copy exactly the dimensions and details of those to the original house.
They also added the veranda, kitchen, and three new bathrooms as well as refinished the wood floors. By 2017, the house became habitable, but the work on the property continues to this day. Truly a labor of love, it will never really be finished.
Recently completed work includes creating the west-facing veranda, from a design in an 1878 architectural design book, extensive landscaping of new gardens all around the farmhouse, finding and resuscitating the over-140-year old water well for use in irrigating our gardens, and bringing the old garden shack back to life as a small cottage.
Our next project, expected to be completed in the winter of 2026, is to install a faithful reproduction of the original iron cresting that once adorned the farmhouse roof. The originals had been melted down during the metal collection drives undertaken during the first and second world wars in order to enable the building of tanks and battleships.