History for the taking -- Vail family offers voluminous documentation of Temecula's origins

By: NICOLE SACK - Staff Writer | Sunday, February 17, 2008 9:32 PM PST ∞

TEMECULA ---- The collection is free, but there will be a $100,000 price tag with accepting a voluminous donation of historical material detailing the modern origins of Temecula.

The great-grandson of Walter Vail, the man who formed the vast ranch where Temecula now stands, in September offered volumes of maps, deeds and documents ---- dating back to the late 1800s ---- to the city. Members of the Temecula Valley Museum determined that the collection being offered by Sandy Wilkinson's family members is one of the most extensive archives of material pertaining to local history ever amassed.

Mayor Mike Naggar had previously requested that staff begin investigating the cost of adopting the historical materials.

On January 22, the City Council voted to transfer the collection from Wilkinson's home to the Temecula Valley Museum. In addition, the council authorized the community services department to begin budgeting, beginning July 1, $20,000 per year for the next five years to undertake the preservation and restoration of the collection.

"This whole region has an extremely rich and colorful history," said Naggar. "There is a need to preserve who we are, where we came from and what occurred here. It's a peek back into the history of the region and describes what life was like, what was valued, what were the goals were and what was important to those who lived here more than a century ago."

Whitney Vail Wilkinson, the son of the late Sandy Wilkinson and the great-grandson of Walter Vail, is the executor of the family estate. Sandy Wilkinson, who died in 2006, was a longtime employee of Vail Ranch and lived his entire life in Temecula. He was in charge of the water rights and issues involved in the building of the Vail Dam ---- then the largest privately built dam in the United States. The dam created Vail Lake, once the key water source for the Temecula Valley and surrounding areas. The original dam and lake are still in operation today, roughly 10 miles east of Temecula along Highway 79 South.

"When my father passed away ... I took on the daunting task of collecting all of the history that my great-grandfather, grandmother and father saved regarding the Vail Ranch," Whitney Wilkinson said. "After spending countless hours going through the many items, it became increasingly clear that the predominance of what was kept deserves to be in a museum for others to share, not stored by one individual."

Fortunately for historians, James "Sandy" Wilkinson threw away little, and what he accumulated over the years paints a detailed picture of the Temecula Valley ---- specifically, the day-to-day operations, acquisitions and associations of one of the largest cattle ranches on the West Coast, Lamb said.

In 1904, Walter L. Vail, who came to the United States with his parents from Nova Scotia, migrated to the state and, with various partners, began buying vast acreage in Southern California.

Vail was already a cattle rancher on a grand scale before he started buying ranch land in Southwest County in 1905, buying large tracts beginning with 38,000 acres.

When he was run over and killed by a streetcar in Los Angeles in 1906, his son, Mahlon Vail, took over the family ranch.

By 1947, the Vail Ranch measured more than 87,500 acres. Through the mid-1960s, the economy of the area centered around the 137-square-mile cattle ranch. The Vail Ranch was sold on Dec. 4, 1964, to Kaiser Development Co., which launched the transformation of the area.

The Vail Ranch once sprawled across 87,500 acres of Southwest County, but all that remains are a handful buildings standing on 4.5 acres in a Temecula shopping center. Kohl's department store and Famous Footwear act as bookends to the swath of land that has remained mostly unchanged for a century.

Fred Lamb, member of the Temecula Valley Museum Board of Directors, and Wendell Ott, manager of the museum, went to personally view the Vail ranch historical artifacts and attest to their relevance.

Among the key items in the collection are antique hand-drawn maps from the 1800s that in many cases are 30 inches by 40 inches ---- and larger. They were prepared by cartographers of the era and include handwritten comments and footnotes.

There are also two four-drawer file cabinets packed full of letters, reports and documents, original leases and check stubs, which help form a detailed image of the Temecula Valley from the 1800s to today.

There are also photographs of Vail family events, personal snapshots and a complete visual record of the construction of the Vail Dam from groundbreaking to finish. The photos give glimpses into the daily life and activities of the ranch and chronicle the cattle empire that was the basis for the economic life and growth of Temecula.

"This is but a glimpse of the total picture included in the vast collection of papers, pictures and documentation being offered to the museum. We have an obligation to our past and future citizens to take on this responsibility of preserving, protecting and sharing this collection with our citizens," said Lamb.

He said there is a short window of opportunity to make a decision, as the collection is fragile and needs to be cataloged, restored and placed in a protective environment to preserve it for the future.

Whitney Wilkinson offered the collection to the Temecula Valley Museum for free, but required that certain conditions be met. Among the requests were that the collection remain intact and not be divided among other institutions without his approval, that proper storage for the collection be provided, that a certain percentage of the collection be displayed permanently at the museum, and that the collection be digitally recorded for future publication and access by researches and scholars.

Lamb said the conditions outlined by Wilkinson are consistent with museum standards for cataloging, restoring and storing of historical artifacts.

Early in the process, Wilkinson had concluded that the Temecula Valley Museum could not meet his conditions. In his early deliberations and evaluation of how best to preserve the collection, he contacted a number of large institutions, one of which was the Huntington Library in Pasadena. That organization was interested in the collection and could meet Wilkinson's conditions. However, the collection would only be available to scholars and not the public at large.

Wilkinson's deliberations brought him back to Temecula, where he believes the collection belongs.

"This is a special project the city must undertake and will never again become available once given to a large museum outside our city," Lamb wrote to the city urging it to accept the donation.

Contact staff writer Nicole Sack at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2616, or nsack@californian.com.