California – Fenley's Footprints

Ridgewood Ranch

In searching for a convenient overnight stop between Fortuna and Vacaville, I stumbled across an RV park located in Willits, California. It caught my attention because it was located on the same ranch where Seabiscuit is buried. The fabled race horse of the the Thirties spent his retirement here eating oats and fathering a plethora of little biscuits. The travel guides said there was a statue of the horse and tours of his barn and such were available. It sounded like a good stopover spot so I punched the coordinates into the GPS.

Upon arrival, something pinged my radar – the place seemed a little odd. Nothing I could put my finger on, just enough to prompt me to do a bit more research on the group that ran the place. They were named innocuously enough: Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule.

Is it a Cult or Not? Chapter 3

And so I dipped again into the lake of handcrafted religion, once again to discover what intrigue lies just beneath the surface, like sharks in the bottom of a seemingly placid ocean. Our story begins with a chap named Bell, and ends with a another named Jones. Nothing too unusual about that, but bear with me for a moment.

Arthur Bell & Mankind United

In the middle of the Great Depression, people were desperate to grab onto anything that looked like it might pull them out of the whirlpool of economic disaster. Along comes Arthur Bell with a formula that is one part Communism, one part Ponzi scheme and two parts Jules Verne SciFi. He convinces nearly 15,000 folks in California to hand over all their worldly goods to join his group, called “Mankind United”. In return they get to come work for companies he has set up and live in his communes in western states.

The payoff is that once the membership has grown to 200 million, everybody gets a free robo-house, a 16 hour work week and a guaranteed income for life. Art claims this is possible because he has a special partnership with spacemen who want to create a utopia on earth. Oh, and he mentions later they also have a super-ray that can blast anybody who gives them guff. (If you’re starting to think this sounds a bit like Scientology, you’re not alone)

Anyway, after enjoying the bounty of his flock and living it up for several years, World War II came along and ruined the fun. Some of the Mankind had become a bit dis-United, demanding their money and property back. Even worse the government took a dim view of so many resources going to a quasi-religious institution instead of the war effort. In an attempt to dodge the meddling Feds and bill collectors, Art renamed the outfit to the less janky-sounding Church of the Golden Rule in an attempt to escape tax collectors. It didn’t work and he was promptly sued by folks who had given their assets to Mankind United.

Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule

At this point things get really murky, but sometime after 1945 the group had recovered enough financially to reorganize as a Christian commune, sans Arthur Bell and his alien pals. They filed successfully for religious non-profit status as Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule (CCGR), and began consolidating the properties they had recovered from the court settlements. In 1962 they bought the Ridgewood Ranch in Willits. It had been acquired at auction by a local logging outfit from the estate of Seabiscuit’s owner, Charles Howard. After harvesting the timber for 11 years the trees were depleted, so the CCGR got a good deal on the property.

CCGR commenced to returning Ridgewood to be a working cattle ranch, staffed by its members working communally. Today they vehemently deny any connection to Bell or Mankind United, and have quietly operated side businesses like the RV park and Seabiscuit tours. (By the way, I never did see the statue or barn because they closed the attraction down for the season two weeks prior to my arrival.)

Jim Jones & Peoples Temple

All this seems fairly innocuous as far as cults go – people were conned by Arthur Bell, but nobody was hurt, except in the pocketbook. Still, I was curious to see if I could learn more about the CCGR in the fifty years since breaking ties with their founder. Is CCGR a sham like Mankind United, or another harmless Christian commune like Lighthouse Ranch? Not much was available online, and the references I could find were pretty benign. Then I came across this document.

According to this statement compiled by researchers at San Diego State, for a time in the late 1960s the CCGR was host to another group called Peoples Temple, led by a man named Jim Jones. Yes, that Jones, as in Jonestown. As in cyanide-laced fruit punch. As in the assassination of US Congressman Leo Ryan. The Jonestown Massacre in 1978 still stands as one of the most horrific examples of the damage a cult can do and contributed the phrase “drinking the Kool Aid” to the modern lexicon.

It’s hard for me to imagine the story I stumbled on to taking a darker turn. I leave it there. Explore further if you wish, the source I’ve linked may or may not be valid, though the San Diego State project that contains it seems to be legit. Draw your own conclusions. As for me, I’m going to listen to my little voice of warning and not return to Ridgewood Ranch.

Mendocino to Napa

Now that we’ve wallowed in that bit of gloom and doom, let’s move on to wine country, playground of the one percent and home to many beautiful living horses. Napa Valley is perhaps the country’s earliest and most successful example of agrotourism on a grand scale. Forget corn mazes and petting goats, in California farmers know how to make money. Picture-perfect wineries aplenty dot the rolling hills, attracting the buzzing Range Rovers to collect bottles of pricey old grape juice. They hurry them back to their temporary hives set up in nouveau inns before dining on sous vide organic squab and micro greens served with a side of champagne foam.

October is the height of the harvest in Napa, and the air was perfumed with the heady aroma of ripe grapes and fresh money.

Vacaville & Lake Solano

My final destination was Vacaville, a nicely-sized town trying to find a balance between the agricultural zone of the central valley and the urban sprawl of the San Francisco metro area. According to my buddy Barrett, Vacaville is considered to be in the “East Bay” market for Real Estate. I guess this means you can still buy a house here for less than a million dollars – the average is around $400K. It is California after all; you can always sleep on the beach until you make it in show biz.

The Nature Center was closed, but I liked the funky sculpture out front.

While I was visiting my friend, I camped at a County Park on Lake Solano. It was a nice quiet place most of the time. Some coyotes had a sing-along one night, and there was occasional rhythm and cries courtesy of the woodpeckers and peacocks that roamed the park. The other humans in the area were very quiet though. Food sources were plentiful, with tons of natural nuts and berries.

This probably explains the prolific upland birds I noticed in the surrounding farmlands. The business of the ranchers appeared to be primarily beef cattle and perhaps a few sheep, but it was a hunter’s paradise as well. I saw many grouse and pheasant, and the wild turkeys ran so thickly there were at least thirty in one flock I spotted along the roadside.