Cholame is reached via State Route 41, just southwest of the junction of Route 46. Rainfall data from a nearby ranch shows that the area around Cholame only receives about eight to nine inches (200–230 mm) of rain in a normal year.
History
Cholame was originally a rancheria of the Salinian Indians.[2]
Jack Ranch Cafe
Rancho Cholame was an 1844 Mexican land grant. In 1867, William Welles Hollister (1818–1886) purchased Rancho Cholame. Hollister sold a half-interest in the rancho to Robert Edgar Jack in 1869.[2][3]
Jack studied at Maine Wesleyan Seminary, and he later was an accountant at a shipping house in New York City. In the Civil War he enlisted in the 56th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and he served in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, during the Battle of Gettysburg and then in New York to quell "anti-Negro riots" there. Near the end of the war, he moved to California and became Hollister's accountant and secretary on the latter's San Justo Ranch surrounding the present city of Hollister. When that property was subdivided, the two bought the Cholame land.
Jack married Hollister's daughter, Lucy Ellen (Nellie) in 1870 and became the largest wool grower in Central California, later switching to cattle and agriculture. Jack organized the County Bank of San Luis Obispo.[3]
The land was sold to the Hearst Corporation in 1966 and is still a working cattle ranch.[2]
On the same date in 2005, the State of California observed the 50th anniversary of Dean's death by naming the intersection as the James Dean Memorial Junction.[4] A few hundred people, including state officials, a Dean family member, several Dean archivists and fans gathered at the junction and in Cholame to pay tribute to the actor.[5]
A memorial to Dean was erected in 1977 near the Jack Ranch Cafe (then Stella's Country Kitchen) by a retired Japanese businessman from Kobe, Seita Ohnishi, costing $13,000 at the time.[6] The monument is made of stainless steel and surrounds a tree of heaven.[7] In particular, Ohnishi was fond of Dean's movie East of Eden, inspiring him to fund the memorial, which was designed in such a way to reflect both the beautiful and unfinished nature of the actor's life.[8][9][10]
^ abcdDavid W. Kean, 1993, Wide Places in the California Roads: The encyclopedia of California's small towns and the roads that lead to them (Volume 1 of 4: Southern California Counties), pp. 44–45. ISBN1884261000
^ abDan Krieger, "Ranch Near Where James Dean Died in Crash Has a Long History," San Luis Obispo Tribune, May 17, 2015, page B3]
