In the House of His Childhood

An Oral History Interview with John Hollister Wheelwright (1934-2025)

Hollister House when it was in the process of being built, around 1910. | Photo: Courtesy

“At El Bulito Cañon I caught a glimpse of the handsome large house of a local cattle-baron. Gleaming white among noble oaks, it had much the air of a French chateau until I reflected that it was probably built of one-inch plank, or perhaps cardboard. Cañon followed cañon, breaking in the rounded hills of yellowing grass that rose in long succession to the west…”

So wrote J. Smeaton Chase, the naturalist and adventurer who set out in 1911 to take a horseback ride from Mexico to Oregon along the California coast. He was referring in this passage to the house built by Jim and Lottie Hollister in 1910, their attempt to create a sense of elegance in the wilderness of what is now Hollister Ranch. It was designed by Bliss and Faville, the top architect firm in San Francisco, constructed of redwood brought in by train.

The house still stands, used today for meetings and community gatherings, and I have been inside many times. On October 23, 2016, I had the honor of walking through it with Jim and Lottie’s grandson, John Hollister Wheelwright (1934–2025), who had lived there as a boy and was visiting from his home in Point Reyes. Maybe we all have dreams of going back to our childhood home, of walking through its rooms, encountering the lingering ghosts. I felt that I was following someone as he traveled back in time, a touching journey into the childhood of a self-described 19th century man.

The son of Jane and Jo Hollister Wheelwright, John and his older sister were shipped off to California from England to live with their grandparents while Jane and Jo studied Jungian analysis and traveled widely. “They put me on a plane and sent me off to another planet,” John said wryly. His grandparents, Lottie and Jim, both nearing their seventies, took the responsibility in stride, tolerating their new charges within preexisting routines and boundaries.

The Hollister family on the steps of their house, around 1936. John Hollister Wheelwright is the blonde-haired baby (with his arm outstretched) seated on his mother’s lap. | Photo: Courtesy

“Nobody talked. There wasn’t any conversation at all. You wonder, do they ever communicate? But I used to hear them at night. I could hear them through the wall, talking long after they went into their bedroom. They were conducting the day’s business, covering everything Grandfather had seen during the day and relating it to their forward progress in operating the Ranch.”

John remembered Lottie seated at the piano, playing Bach’s Prelude Number 1, which he said was still his favorite piece of music. He pointed out the location of the sofa where she stretched out while reading, and he described how she washed her hair with rainwater collected in a 300-gallon tank and drawn from a spigot on the deck. “I think I was the only child to see her with her hair down,” he told me, “It reached all the way to the floor.“

“In the living room, Grandfather had one of those cathedral-shaped radios powered by two dry cells, and I remember listening to Roosevelt’s announcement of us entering the war because of Pearl Harbor. It was December 7, Grandfather’s birthday. This was not how he expected to observe it.”

“I’ll give you the layout,” John continued, standing up to his six-foot-six height, and he led me through the house like a docent.

“There was a copper coal scuttle, which I still have, right there on the edge of the fireplace. Grandfather put his booted foot on it. There was a Stickley rocker chair right there. About here, there was an overstuffed chair, which was my chair. And there was the cupboard where the fancy crockery was kept.”

“Right over the table, there was a fixture sticking down, which was the gas jet for the acetylene gas from which the house was run. You pulled the cord, which was attached to something that looked like a cigarette lighter, a flint with a serrated wheel, and it would make a spark and light the acetylene. When you turned on the valve, there was brilliant yellow light.”

Jim was so fond of that warm light he chose to keep it even after electricity became available. At night, he pulled a string attached to a switch connected to a gasoline-fueled generator, and the lights went out. “When Grandfather went to bed,” said John, “it was time for everybody to go to bed.”

John Hollister Wheelwright in October of 2016 | Photo: Cynthia Ward

We walked up the stairs, and John pointed out elegant details, like the wood guards on the corners of the plaster walls, and the solid brass fixtures in the bathroom. He showed me the bedroom window through which he would make his escape after his grandparents went to sleep, stepping on the beam ends, climbing down the lattice work, and lowering himself onto the ground. He referred to these escapes as his nighttime excursions.

“But what was there to do?” I asked. “Where did you go?”

“Oh, I was off to the races, having a fine time for myself,” he said. “I’d go down to the orchard and eat some fruit. I’d walk down to the beach or wander around the canyon.”

It seemed poignant to me; I wanted there to be more than that. “Did you have a sense of wonder about the night?” I asked, in my wide-eyed way.

“Children don’t specifically have a sense of wonder,” he replied. “They accept as normal what they see, and they hope that what they see as normal remains. I kind of took a fix on the world as it was then.”

It was an agrarian life. John learned to read cattle early on, and he vividly remembered watching the fall hay harvest in 1940. There was a stationary baler with a giant arm powered by a tractor, cowboys with pitchforks, a pair of horses – a noisy, labor-intensive operation that left a great impression on the 6-year-old boy.

But the Ranch was also a world of wildness and mystery: animal sightings, oak-lined canyons, hills awash in moonlight. John was lonesome, but he always felt better when he ventured outdoors. Even now, he mused, “I have less depression when I’m in the wild.”

He loved to fish and hunt. “Grandfather used to lend me his single shot four-10, a little tiny shotgun, and I’d go to maybe Santa Anita slough and wait for the ducks to come in. You’re there amidst the most beautiful possible landscape, sitting in the rushes. Early in the morning or late at night, as the light’s changing … oh, this is special.”

A recent photo of the Hollister House in spring, with wisteria in bloom. | Photo: Courtesy

A working cattle ranch to this day, the Hollister Ranch has self-regulated development to less than 2 percent of its land area. It remains an astonishingly unspoiled wonderland, among the most biodiverse and archaeologically important ecosystems in the world. But John could only compare it to what he had known in his youth. He was grateful that the Ranch had not been ruined, like so many other places in California, but he was snagged in another time. There were very few other people back then, he said, and the only houses were in Bulito Canyon, except for the bunkhouse at Santa Anita. “The experience I had here is not to be replicated,” he concluded.

He was uneasy navigating modern life. “I dream about the things I used to enjoy doing and think sometimes that I’d like to do one of them again. But the world changed, and I didn’t.”

I asked him if he had any wisdom or advice to share. “I think you should make an effort not to trample on anybody,” he replied. “Try to conduct yourself in a way that doesn’t make too much trouble for other people. That’s what this place does to you. It’s instilled early on.”

He looked back at the house one more time as we walked away. I don’t believe he ever returned.

(This interview was conducted in October of 2016. John Hollister Wheelwright passed away in early January of 2025.)