Los Alamos Price Ranch

MEMORIES OF THE PRICE RANCH

BY RANDY LITTLEJOHN

During the early to mid-1970s I had a chance to live at Price Ranch, which is just across Highway 101 from Los Alamos. During the five years or so I lived there I picked up a few things about the history of the place and the original owners. The little I learned about the original owners and about the land itself was very intriguing.

Originally the land that became Price Ranch was a Spanish Land Grant. Mr. Price purchased it in the late teens or early 1920s and started developing the land into a kind of "gentleman's" ranch, with crops and farm animals. When I lived on the ranch there were still 927 acres, but I'm told it was once very much larger than that.

Mr. Price was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate and I was told that he was the first one to invent the compound that makes rubbers adhere to one another in the formation of automobile tires. I'd guess this is where the money came from to create a little piece of California paradise.

When I lived on the ranch there were seven homes altogether. I lived in the main ranch house, which sits at the highest point on the ranch, and in a little cottage just down the hill from it. The hill leading up to the main ranch house was all irrigated and planted with fruit trees such as pomegranates, grapes and roses. The main house, if its still there, has a huge living room with a fireplace and large windows that look out through a covered veranda with large potted plants to a pastoral valley. Though the houses were built in the Twenties, it was easy to tell they were made with the very best materials of the time - exotic woods and brass - and with very great skill and imagination.

Mr. and Mrs. Price evidently were early jet-setters and they had a Villa in France was well as their ranch in California. I was told that the Prices often had Hollywood people to their place for big BBQs. I've seen a pit out by a small pond with a spit large enough for half a steer. I heard several stories about what became of the Prices.

Apparently when Mr. Price died (in the Forties) he willed Price Ranch to M.I.T., but with the stipulation that nothing of the ranch would be liquidated until after the passing of Mrs. Price. She would be allowed to live out her life there, with the ranch just as it had always been. Mrs. Price died, if I remember correctly, in 1963 in France, but her will somehow superceded Mr. Price's will. According to Mrs. Price's will, the land was to left in the hands of one Ruddy Smithers, who was the long-time caretaker of the property. After he passed then finally the land would go to M.I.T. There was a rumor that Mrs. Price and Ruddy Smithers had an affair.

Mr. Smithers was once a member of the United States equestrian team. He was still living at the time I lived on the ranch and one day he took me into his tack room. It was filled with trophies, ribbons and wreaths that must have hung around the neck of some of the finest horses back in the day. Everything was covered in a thick coat of dust. Ruddy was a character. He could tell a great story.

After Mrs. Price died in '63, Ruddy locked up the main ranch house and didn't go back into it for ten years. The first house I lived in was the main ranch house. When my friends and family and I first opened the door into the living room from the veranda cobwebs tore apart from between the door and doorjamb. There were long cobwebs draped from the chandelier in the middle of the room all of the way to the floor. As we began to explore, we found that everything was as Mrs. Price had left it ten years before. The bathroom cupboards were filled with her linens and toiletries. The desk in the front room still had documents from when the land was a Spanish land grant. There was a crank phonograph player - the kind with a large megaphone - and records from the Twenties.

The main house had (or has, if its still there) a main bedroom, a library, the large living room, a wet bar, a formal dining room, an indoor garden between the dining room and the large kitchen and a maid's bedroom beyond a washroom.

There were incredible paintings and drawings on the walls from very, very accomplished artists, and the heavy, hand-carved, dark wood furniture must have been from Europe. Some of it looked to me like it may have been from very early in the 1800s, or perhaps even from the 1700s.

Price Ranch was still a little bit of paradise when I lived there far after its heyday. It must have really been something back in the day. I've always dreamed about coming back some day after I made my fortune to buy Price Ranch and restore it to what it must have been like in the roaring Twenties, but it wasn't to be. I'm grateful that I was able to live there for a few years. It was an incredible experience.

If you have other information on the Price Ranch, please let me know at johnv@losalamosinfo.com