San Dimas’ Oldest House Is Simply a Home to Owners

There are three wooden signs outside the unpretentious house on East 1st Street.

Two are homespun reminders that the Ratliffs--Opal and Russell--live there.

The third announces that this five-room, gray wood Victorian is a small piece of Western history--the city’s oldest house.

Martha Glauthier, curator of the San Dimas Historical Society, said wood for the home was cut from Northern California redwoods before the turn of the century. The logs were floated down the Pacific to San Pedro, then carted to a San Dimas planing mill by horse and buggy.

The house was built in 1887 and 1888 for the land agent of the San Jose Rancho Co., E. M. Marshall, who lived there with his family. In 1894 it became the first home of Harry Walker, whose family was prominent in San Dimas society for generations. Walker’s uncle’s home--a grand Victorian mansion around the corner from the East 1st Street house--is now a restaurant.

When the Ratliffs bought the house in 1962 for $6,500, they converted a back porch into a second bathroom and lowered the living room’s original 16-foot ceiling. As far as they know, those were the only major structural changes ever made to the house.

Despite the home’s historical designation, bestowed by the city in 1982, there is nothing snooty about the house or its owners.

Ratliff grandchildren and great-grandchildren have been known to slide down the sloping cellar door in back of the house--just like the one in Dorothy’s Kansas home in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Around front, Kelly green steps lead to a porch dominated by an inviting cushioned swing.

During a recent family reunion honoring the Ratliffs’ 65th wedding anniversary, 17 visitors bunked at the two-bedroom house, and seven more bedded down in a trailer parked on the back lawn for the occasion. At one point during the festivities, a clothes tree next to Opal Ratliff’s living room recliner held 15 baseball caps.

Ratliff, 83, was born in Oklahoma and as a baby traveled with his family in a covered wagon to Missouri, where he grew up and where he met his wife.

After the marriage, they settled in Shenandoah, Iowa, and had 10 children: Forrest, 64; Farrell, 61; Gerald, 59; Montell, 57; Bobby, 55; Patsy, 51, and two sets of twins--Mary and Larry, 49, and Barbara and Betty, 44. There are also 56 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren and one great-great-granddaughter, totaling 113 immediate clan members.

The Ratliffs came to San Dimas from Shenandoah in 1961 to stay with Bobby after Ratliff lost his $75-a-week job as a nurseryman.

“I got fired for joining a union,” he said. “We didn’t have no union. So I got fired, and they blacklisted me.

“We was so poor, we couldn’t hardly stand it.”

Finding new employment was tough, but eventually he landed a job as a mill hand in a paper factory, and later worked as a custodian at Bonita High School in town.

Opal Ratliff, 79, took a job as cook in a rest home and later as dishwasher and cook in a coffee shop, so they were able to afford the house, where they reared their two youngest children.

Both Ratliffs are retired, though Russell Ratliff restores saddles in the work shed behind the house for a little extra income.

Inside the house, walls and furniture tops are almost solid with family photos. Some show sons Bobby and Forrest in Navy uniforms during World War II. Mixed in with dozens of baby pictures are shots of John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

There are also snapshots of Tudy, Ratliff’s dog, and Shokey, his 12-year-old mare, who is boarded at the San Dimas Equestrian Center. And framed near the front door is a composite print of baseball greats Pete Rose and Ty Cobb.

The couple didn’t know about the house’s history when they moved in. Somebody mentioned it one day, and the news made them proud, Opal Ratliff said. But afterward, she added, “we never thought nothing too much about it.”

For the Ratliffs, the house’s value seems to be measured more in present pleasures than distant past.

“We’ve enjoyed this old house,” Russell Ratliff said. “We’ve had good luck here. And we love San Dimas.”