DEL VALLE CARRIAGE

The Del Valle Buggy at Rancho Camulos Museum was manufactured about 1850 by Miller & Stevens of 368 Broadway in New York City. It made the trip around Cape Horn when it was ordered by the family of Ygnacio del Valle, who had inherited the 48,000-acre Rancho San Francisco (western Santa Clarita Valley) and built their main, extant adobe home on the westernmost section in 1853. The buggy remained behind in 1924 when the remainder of the Del Valle ranch — Rancho Camulos — was sold to August Rubel. The Rubel daughters said they remembered riding around in the once fashionable buggy on the property.

In 2008, Rancho Camulos Museum volunteers Ralph Rees, a retired schoolteacher, and his wife Pat, both of Fillmore, undertook to restore the buggy after seeing it on display at a museum event. Shirley Rubel Lorenz gifted the buggy to the nonprofit museum and the work began. Ralph and Pat Rees donated more than 600 hours of labor on the buggy, while their daughter Wendy researched its manufacture. Docent chair at the time Marie Wren of FIllmore helped to raise more than $6,000 to purchase hardware, upholstery materials and labor, and new axles and wheels. Today the buggy is housed and exhibited in a carriage house on the grounds of Rancho Camulos designed by Ralph Rees and built by a number of museum volunteers.

2015 Volunteer of the Year: Awarded to Ralph Rees

Ralph is a talented carpenter and has donated his time and talent to significant projects at the museum, including

• Replica of the del Valle cross in the chapel garden

• Construction of the museum information kiosk

• Numerous carpentry repairs to the 1920 Small Adobe

• Restoration of the 19th century del Valle buggy (to learn about the history of the del Valle buggy and the story of Ralph’s work in restoring it, click here).