Commissary

The commissary was an important storehouse on the ranch.

NPS Photo/Conrad Provan

Quick Facts

Amenities

2 listed

Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Shelter/Cabin

Oral history accounts recall the cabin supplied basics like meat, potatoes, beans, and other canned goods for ranch operations and sheep camps. Sheepherders arriving on horseback, packed burros, and mules would stock up with weeks worth of provisions and then return to their camps in the mountains. Some accounts give the building dates as 1909; however analysis of tree-ring cutting dates from log core samples proves that it was actually built after 1940. Some stories are from before that time, and a 1921 photo shows an almost identical structure in the same location. The fate of the older structure is unknown, but it was likely the original commissary from the stories.