From The Archives

Introduction

This 1020 acre property is located in Siskiyou County about 7 miles from the city of Montague, CA and approximately 14 miles from Yreka, CA. The ranch sits in the beautiful Little Shasta Valley. Little Shasta Valley is a very private and little known valley. It is surrounded by working cattle ranches that look out on the towering Mt. Shasta (14,179 ft). This ranch has excellent views of the valley floor, Ball Mountain, Goosenest Mountain, Table Rock Mountain, and of course Mount Shasta. The ranch is minutes from the Montague airport which has a 3360 ft asphalt runway. Commercial flights can be found in Klamath Falls, OR 76 miles away or Redding, CA 102 miles away. The ranch is situated in the middle of the Valley floor. You can head to the town of Mt. Shasta (42 miles) for fine dining or snow skiing at Mt.Shasta Ski Bowl or head up to Ashland, OR (56 miles) for the Shakespeare festival, fine dining or snow skiing at Mt. Ashland Ski Park. The ranch is loaded with history. The Soule’ family first moved to the area in 1861. The historic 4450 sq ft Queen Anne Victorian is ready for some restoration, but is quite a site. It was built in 1900 by Stephen Soule’. The ranch has 14 historic outbuildings, from a blacksmith shop, coach house, and smoke house to a historic bunk house. The irrigated pasture, adjudicated water from the Little Shasta River, 13 acre reservoir, awesome views of Mt. Shasta, make this ranch a unique and special place.

Size & Description

The property sits at the 2500 ft elevation and is fairly flat around the home, barns and irrigated pasture. It has a gradual climb as you get on the rangeland and tops out at almost 3000 ft elevation. The property has several irrigation ditch canals that go through the property supplying water to this ranch and the neighboring ranches.

Agriculture

The ranch has 80 to 90 acres of irrigated pasture meadow. This is strong feed for cattle and horses mostly made up of Timothy grass, Orchard grass and
clover. There is another 60 acres that they usually flood irrigate and plant in grain; barley, oats or wheat. There are approximately 25 acres that is subirrigated from the reservoir run off and ditches. You can dry land farm 90 acres and the rest of the acreage, 845 acres, is range land, roads, and buildings. The ranch is currently leased out to the neighbor from June 1 to May 31. The rent is paid upfront and has been the same price of $20,700 for the last 4 years. The tenant is responsible to maintain the ditches, up keep on the fences and care for the cattle.
The property has good soils. A majority of the farm is mostly made up two soils, Montague Clay and Lassen-Kuck Complex, Stony.

House & Barns

The house was built in 1900 by the current owner’s great grandfather. It is a Queen Anne Victorian that was very popular in the late 1890’s and 1900’s. It is approximately 4450 sq ft and in its heyday was one of the biggest homes in the valley. The home has 5 bedrooms upstairs and a bedroom downstairs. The full bathroom is upstairs and the water closet is downstairs. The Parlor room, dining room, kitchen, and front hall are all on the first floor, and there is a cellar. The home will need some work, but has such an amazing history it will look outstanding when completed.

The ranch still has all the old outbuildings from when it was a productive farm. You have a blacksmith shop, slaughter house, smokehouse, woodshed, dry goods room, cobbler’s room, machine barn, grain barn, garage, shop, scale house, cow barn, two story horse barn, coach house, two story rock bunkhouse and the old Hovey Gulch School built in the 1870’s. With a little TLC these buildings can be brought back to their glory.