A Brief History of Hammond Ranch East

(a Siskiyou County land subdivision) 

In the late 1960s, John Engvald and Richard Ramsey purchased and subdivided a part of the old ranch owned by Dwight Hammond and his family, commonly known as Hammond Ranch East.  This development was seen by the subdividers as a high-class, planned community.  It was promoted to potential buyers with airplane trips via a landing field in the meadows north of the subdivision and with bathing beauties in bikinis on water skies gliding over the reservoir waters.  Also advertised was a ski resort on Mt. Eddy to the southwest, complete with ski lifts and runs by which landowners could ski right to their door. 

The Hammond Lake Association was formed in 1969 and was to own, manage, maintain, preserve and control the entire Ranch area.  Engvald and Ramsey did not make association membership mandatory nor did they deed ownership of anything, including the Dwight Hammond Agricultural Reservoir land, to the Association.  They could not deed rights to the water in the reservoir since the water rights were and still are held by landowners to the north in the Shasta Valley.

Ernie Fuller was the first Ranch resident, living in a trailer below the area known as Long Meadow nine months of the year.  He was named caretaker in November of 1974.

Cattle grazing was allowed on the ranch for many years.  The cattleman involved most often was Richie Morgan of Montague.  That arrangement, based on the designation of the County as “open range,” continued into the 1980s, when residency on the Ranch reached the point that cattle no longer had enough room.

Power came to the more easily accessible areas of the Ranch in 1982.  The Association changed its name from Hammond Lake Association to Hammond Landowners Association in 1986 and became a California Non-Profit Mutual Benefit Corporation in 1990.