Ramona’s California

Kevin Taylor and her husband, Steve, check out the hand-hewn beams in the blacksmith shop at Rancho Guajome. The story goes that the hacienda’s builder, Cave Johnson Couts, scavenged the sycamore timbers from the ruins of nearby Mission San Luis Rey.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

An old copy of “Ramona” sits in a guest bedroom at the hacienda. In the nearby sun room, a museum visitor takes a self-guided tour. After the book came out, Guajome’s owners, the Couts family, began pitching its connection to “Ramona,” even wooing tourists in cooperation with the nearby Santa Fe Railway.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Looking out from the tiny sewing room roof, a park ranger gives a tour to a couple planning their wedding at Rancho Guajome. The marsh in the upper right is supposedly the “washing place” made famous in the novel. It’s where the characters Ramona and Alessandro met and fell in love.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Friends pose for photos outside La Casa de Estudillo, an adobe hacienda on the main plaza at Old Town San Diego. Descriptions of a house like Casa de Estudillo figure in the novel. For years, it drew fans of the book who believed it is where Ramona and Alessandro got married.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Goofing off in front of the Casa de Estudillo are three friends from Santa Monica — Alanna Archibald, 16, left, Kara McVey, 17, and Rebecca Rodriguez, 16. For years, the 19th century hacienda in San Diego was known as “Ramona’s Marriage Place.”  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Tour guide Lisa Long takes on the role of Sarah Robinson, one of the first settlers in Old Town San Diego, down to the 19th century dress. In the background is La Casa de Estudillo.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Visitors gaze at the altar in a tiny chapel at La Casa de Estudillo, where fans of “Ramona” believe the two young lovers married. Today, the house is part of Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A bell tower crowns the roof of La Casa de Estudillo, which was completed about 1830. At one time, it was the grandest house in San Diego. The state took it over in the late 1960s.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

A worker tends to a fountain in the gardens of the casa in San Diego.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Paintings of members of the Rübel family line a wall of the hacienda at Rancho Camulos. Helen Hunt Jackson visited the Ventura County rancho before she wrote “Ramona.” Once the book was published, the ranch became the “focal point for the Ramona myth,” one writer says.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

At the ranch, the entrance to the chapel is itself a shady retreat. Facing it are Camulos’ gardens and a fountain. A visitor to the ranch in Jackson’s day would have found a winery, chapel, grapevine arbor, calm courtyard and an inviting veranda.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Rancho Camulos includes a free-standing chapel similar to the one at Rancho Moreno, the imaginary setting of “Ramona.” After the book was published, the ranch’s then-owners, the Del Valley family, were inundated with fans of the novel.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The hacienda at Rancho Camulos. More than a century after the first “Ramona” fans started showing up at the ranch, its owners still accept visitors, maintain a small museum and gift shop and rent space out for weddings.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The California black walnut tree is so enormous and old — it was planted in 1870 or so — that it needs propping up these days. Visit the tree at Ranch Camulos and you can marvel at the gnarled branches reaching skyward like tentacles from the Earth.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

The Ramona Bowl Amphitheatre in Hemet is home to the “Ramona” pageant, and a historical marker commemorating the annual productions, which began in 1923.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

A small museum at the Ramona Bowl exhibits memorabilia from past productions and early editions of the novel. Over the years, the young women playing Ramona have included Raquel Tejada, who soon became better known as Raquel Welch.  (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)