THE TWISSELMAN FAMILY RANCH HISTORY OF THE KERN AND SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTIES
Twenty-four year old German-born Heinrich "Henry" Twisselmann (today spelled Twisselman) landed in San Francisco around 1862, aboard a Danish whaling vessel. Like most of his fellow shipmates, he was bound for the gold fields of California. In 1876, Henry married the adventurous Elizabeth "Lizzie" Meng, whom he met in San Francisco while she was staying with family friends at a boarding house. Lizzie hailed from Switzerland and, along with her family, had joined the westward trek of other Europeans seeking to pioneer the unsettled American territory.
Henry and Lizzie moved to San Luis Obispo in 1878 and purchased property on the present-day site of the University of Cal Poly where they operated the Chorro Dairy. At the age of 46, Henry died of complications from tuberculosis of the bone, leaving Lizzie with five small children and a dairy to run. The intrepid Lizzie rose to the challenge and two years later set up her own homestead in the hills above Cholame, east of Paso Robles, next to her brother and near her parents. There she took up farming grain on what they called the Grant Place, near Parkfield. The families in the Cholame and Bitterwater Valley were primarily farming grain and raising hay and some ran a number of cattle or sheep. Lizzie Twisselmann helped to pioneer what was the frontier of California as well as the San Luis Obispo County area.
Lizzie's middle child, Christian "Chris" Twisselmann married Eleanora "Nora" Anderson in October 1902 and two years later bought the "Bruce Place," afterwards referred to by all as "the home place." This was where they commenced the building of their sheep and cattle empire. Chris ultimately controlled over 100,000 acres, and on a normal year maintained about 10,000 head of livestock.
By 1910, Chris had his first car, a Buick Touring car, and hired a man to drive it. He had up to forty hired men, a bookkeeper, his own blacksmith and built a barn that could stable up to fifty horses. Nora and the children each had their own cattle and brands, one of the brands being the HT, which had been used by Chris' father Henry. Chris had bought equipment and horses to run a transport service and he built the road up the Palo Prieta Canyon, the road from Morro Bay to Cayucos, and from Cayucos to Cambria. All of this successful enterprise was linked to a man who had quit school after the fourth grade. Nora "kept the home fires burning," working hard - soaping and scrubbing clothes on a scrub board, churning butter, making bread, killing and cutting up chickens, and cooking regularly for large numbers, including the hired men, all while raising her six children. Chris often told people he couldn't have gotten where he did without his wife and children.
In 1914, Chris bought a ranch in the mountains of the Temblor Range from the Obispo Oil Company. Chris' son Carl and wife Dorothy in 1945, bought their sprawling Temblor Ranch in the western area of Kern County. The original stage route from the coast into the San Joaquin Valley passed through this ranch, and the remnants of the old trail can still be seen. The ranch headquarters was a camping spot for Spanish missionaries, then a stage stop, next a Miller and Lux cowboy camp. Chris and Nora Twisselmann's many descendants, grandchildren and great grandchildren, continue as the primary landholders in this region of the western side of Kern County and the eastern side of San Luis Obispo County, still operating their individual cattle ranches in this country famed for its "temblors," or earthquakes.
