He wrote the world's longest-running bestseller, Call of the Wild, and traveled the world over – but Jack London (1876–1916) claimed his greatest work was rescuing this 1400-acre preserve from early settlers' slash-and-burn farming methods. Beauty Ranch remains as Jack left it: Yokohama sailor shirts overflowing steamer trunks, cowboy hat hanging by his desk. A short but rugged hiking trail leads past Jack's gravesite to ruined Wolf House and House of Happy Walls (10am to 5pm), featuring Jack's rejection letters in the bookshop.
Wolf House was Jack's dream house, a stone-and-redwood lodge that was almost completed when it burned down in 1913. Jack died three years later, before the house was rebuilt. The losses were blows to his widow, fellow writer and free spirit Charmian Kittredge London, but she regrouped and repurposed the stones to build the House of Happy Walls. Today it's a museum (10am to 5pm) – don't miss Jack's rejection letters in the downstairs bookshop, and Charmian's fabulous flapper dresses in her walk-in wardrobe upstairs. Insightful displays cover Jack's death-defying travels and his controversial ideas, including socialism and Darwinism, and address Charmian's strikingly modern writing, outspoken feminism, and challenging role as Jack's editor. From the museum, it's a hilly half-mile walk to the remains of Wolf House, passing Jack's gravesite along the way.
Other paths wind around Beauty Ranch farmstead (open noon to 4pm) where Jack and Charmian lived and worked. Jack changed locations and occupations frequently – from Oakland oyster seller to Alaska gold prospector to Korean war reporter to global-bestselling author – but he found his passion in farming. Influenced by his friend, trailblazing Santa Rosa botanist Luther Burbank, Jack pioneered organic farming, planted heirloom varietals, even built a circular piggery to collect fertilizer. Hike or mountain-bike up to the piggery, or take the easy 2-mile loop to London Lake for a scenic picnic.
