DOI: 10.25549/chs-m17711
title: The real(?) Ramona at her cabin near San Jacinto, after 1886

description: Photograph of the real(?) Ramona at her cabin near San Jacinto, after 1886. The hut behind her is made of adobe bricks. The roof is made of twigs and leaves(?). Ramona sits near the front door. In front of her are two large round bowls (or baskets?) The surrounding area looks dry and devoid of vegetation. Mountains are visible in the background.; "Although Rancho Camulos became well known among Californians for the accomplishments of three generations of Del Valles in both the political and agricultural history of the state, it is best recognized as the 'Home of Ramona.' When Helen Hunt Jackson published her best-selling novel Ramona in 1884, it was her intention to supply the general reader with an appreciation of the California Indians' plight as illustrated by the trials and tribulations of the fictional Indian girl, Ramona. Disappointed that A Century of Dishonor, her earlier book reciting the past injustices of the Indians, received so little notice, she wrote Ramona hoping to elicit popular support for the Indians, much as her acquaintance Harriet Beecher Stowe had done with Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ramona inspired four motion pictures and a pageant performed annually in Hemet, California, since 1923. The setting and characters in Jackson's book Ramona appear to be composites drawn from places Jackson visited and people she met in her travels throughout Southern California during the early 1880s. Various portions of the novel were drawn from her visits to California Indian reservations, missions and ranchos." -- Rancho Camulos Museum archives (part 1 of 2).; "It appears likely that Jackson chose Camulos as the setting for a portion of her novel upon the advice of her close friends, Antonio and Mariana Coronel. In the opinion of the Coronels, Camulos was one of the few remaining ranches still reflecting its colonial origins. Antonio Coronel assisted Jackson in the preparation of an itinerary of ranches and missions; Jackson heeded their advice, briefly visiting Camulos on January 23, 1882. In her novel, published two years later, Ramona's fictional home on the 'Moreno Ranch' was located 'midway in the valley [between lands] to the east and west, which had once belonged to the Missions of San Fernando and San Bonaventura [sic].' This geographical location, and the description of the setting recounted in the novel accurately matched Camulos." -- Rancho Camulos Museum archives (part 2 of 2).; "Ramona became so phenomenally popular that schools, streets and even towns were named in honor of the novel's fictional heroine. With the huge influx of tourists and settlers flooding into California during the 1880s and 1890s on the newly established railroads, many communities claimed Ramona for their own in order to profit from the vast tourism bandwagon. Writers such as George Wharton James and others visited Rancho Guajome and the Estudillo house in San Diego to photograph and research the conflicting claims for the setting of the novel, a controversy made possible by the death of Helen Hunt Jackson in 1885. James, in his 1909 book 'Through Ramona's Country', expressed the opinion that Camulos was still the 'avowed and accepted home of the heroine.' According to James, Camulos had changed little since the time of Jackson's first visit. In 1888, Charles Lummis, a close friend of the Del Valle family since his arrival in California four years earlier, published a promotional booklet filled with photographs he had taken at the ranch, proclaiming Camulos as the home of Ramona." -- Rancho Camulos Museum archives.