Bacon Ranch

From the East Entrance, turn into the campground and take the road to the right of the Campground and Park Store about a quarter mile north to the Bacon-Butterfield Ranch Trailhead. From there, Bacon Ranch is about 0.7 mile one way; allow 30 to 60 minutes. The route is mostly flat dirt with limited shade. The grade is easy, but the dirt route is not easily wheelchair-accessible. There are no restrooms or drinking water at the ranch, and no water along the walk, so use developed facilities before setting out, especially in hot weather.

The house is the clearest landmark, but the ranch also includes a barn, blacksmith shop, garage, corral and other outbuildings. Interpretive placards and a picnic table make it easier to spend a little time looking around. For a photo, leave some of the oak canopy and valley setting around the house, then look for the other buildings; the group tells a fuller story than a tight shot of one facade.

Elizabeth's son John arrived in Bear Valley in 1865 and first built a simple log cabin. The family arrived the next year, and the surviving house was built in the late 1860s to replace that cabin. In 1879 the farm produced 600 pounds of butter and 170 dozen eggs, as well as honey and wax. This was a productive household, not just a remote cabin. This part of the park is traditional Chalon homeland, a much longer human history than the ranch's nineteenth-century story.

Bacon Road was an early way into what is now Pinnacles, and the Bacon sons sometimes guided visitors to the rocks. In one late-19th-century account, hikers from San Francisco reached the house in rainy weather and were given supper and a bed; they later sent Elizabeth a silver butter knife in thanks. It's a small detail that makes this feel like part of the park's early visitor story, not just a collection of old buildings.