Historic hotel back on market

In the late fifties, when the Mountain Ranch Hotel was last up for sale, it would have been charitably called a fixer-upper.

Wallpaper hung from the stately home’s high ceilings, there were rats in the water tank and, said current owner Tim Lane. The home’s nearly wrap-around porch was so rotten one of his friends fell right through it.
  

“It was quite a bit run down,” said area historian Wally Motloch.

Today, the 4,000-square-foot mansion is once again for sale. But now, with a decade-plus remodel long completed, plus some choice recent refurbishing, it has returned to its former glory — if not surpassed it.

Leaded and beveled glass windows — perhaps the home’s most valuable feature — glitter in its main bathroom. A sturdy new porch with a handrail copied from a home of Mark Twain’s was put in last year. New wiring courses through the walls. And there are no rats in the water tank.

“In its present state it is the nicest building in town,” said Motloch. “Period.”

While it is practically a youngster compared to Mountain Ranch’s other historic buildings — the Dominghini and Dughi-Raggio adobe buildings date to the 1860s, said Motloch — the home has had quite the active childhood.

It was built in 1905 — a date said to be confirmed by an inscription, supposedly carved with a diamond ring, on a south-facing window in the home’s formal dining room reading: “Edith May 4, 1905” — but the story stretches back further still.

It begins with William Irvine, who in 1874 paid $61 for the whole townsite of El Dorado, as Mountain Ranch was then known. Among his many business ventures was a small hotel on what became the Hotel’s property, according to a history compiled by Lane.

Known as the Ryan House, it was a one-story board and batten building with a hodge-podge of a floor plan that was always being expanded to accommodate a few more travelers.    

Emma Filippini bought the property and, while holed up in the Ryan House, watched the present-day structure being built.

They would operate the place for a dozen years as a boarding house, offering miners and cowhands, school teachers and salesman a warm bed and a hot meal — which for the truly destitute, thanks to Emma’s big heart, was provided free of charge.

“It was a family home. But like everybody then, they took people in,” said Judith Marvin, a Calaveras County historian. “Every ranch here was used like a way station or hotel. People could go only so far every day.”

After the Filippinis sold the place in 1917, it continued life as a hotel for a few years, then drifted into disrepair. Six years later, the whole property was sold to Danish immigrant Joe Josephsen for $3,150.

Josephsen’s wife Anna opened the place up as a boarding house once again, as her husband traveled across Calaveras County doing hauling work and even did a stint in Alaska.

The register from that time lists guests from across California — Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco — and at least one from much farther afield: On Oct. 1, 1929, Carl Josephsen, of Denmark, believed to be a relative, signed his name.

In 1945, Joe started a sawmill on the property — the distinctive cone can still be seen west of the house — which was active until 1952.   

Then in 1959, Eldred Lane, a Bay Area ranch manager, with a little bit of pushing from his wife, Blossom, made a deal to buy the property.

“She’s the one who fell in love with the property, sort of over my dad’s better wishes,” said Lane.

Then began the remodeling. For more than a decade, starting in the mid-60s, the family stripped bare and rebuilt the home on weekends, summers and other spare time away from their base in El Cerrito.

Blossom, whose love for restoration extended not just to homes but to furniture, also populated the rooms with recovered gems. Today, plush and polished period antiques fill the rooms, from chaise lounges and chandeliers to armchairs and oil paintings.

The furniture is not included with the house, but available at an extra price, said Lane.

“This was a monumental project,” Lane said. How much did it all cost? “I have no idea.”

Despite the care of the re-creation, some things have changed. Instead of a watering hole out front — called The Drink Emporium and one of four saloons in the town then — there is a swimming pool out back.

Instead of entering on a tree-lined grass carriage way, there is a more discreet gravel side drive.

And instead of a fire sale bargain like past years — $61 in 1874, $3,150 in 1917 and not many multiples more than that in 1961 — the hotel and 7-acre property is listed at $1.25 million.

Lane envisions the four-bedroom, four-bathroom and adjoining property becoming a winery — an adjacent 82 acres are also for sale — conference center, wedding location or, in a return to its roots, a bed and breakfast.

“It just doesn’t fit into my family’s plans anymore,” he said. “Its time for somebody else to enjoy it.”    

Put on the market in early June, Lane said there has been lots of interest, but no offers.

But Lane, a semi-retired real-estate lawyer who still owns a 2,200-acre property in Rail Road Flat, is in no rush.

“I always figured it would take time for the right person to find it.”