Old Ranch House Is Reborn as Museum

The first time Mary Ruth Erickson saw the ranch house that had once belonged to Susanna Bixby Bryant, it was boarded up and covered with graffiti.

“Too bad,” Erickson, a Yorba Linda Historical Society board member, said she recalls thinking. “If the place weren’t in such terrible shape,” she thought, “it would be the perfect home for the society’s first museum.”

This week, after several years of rehabilitation, that is exactly what the once-abandoned home has become--a museum.

Built in 1911, the new home of the Yorba Linda Historical Society and Heritage Museum was the main ranch house of the 5,000-acre Rancho Canon de Santa Ana. Bryant’s father bought the ranch from Bernardo Yorba, after whom Yorba Linda is named, in 1875.

Susanna Bixby Bryant ran the ranch after her parents died and brother Fred moved to watch over the family’s other land holdings in Los Alamitos.

“She was definitely ahead of her time,” Erickson said.

While managing the ranch, Bryant developed an interest in native Southern California plants and eventually developed the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens, one of the first in California.

The gardens were moved to Claremont in 1951, but several of the plants have been brought back to embellish the grounds of the museum.

Historical society members have filled Susanna Bryant’s home with local relics from the 1920s and ‘30s, including a counter from Doc Cannon’s Main Street drugstore and tools that were used to harvest oranges around town. They also collected some dresses that belonged to relatives of Bernardo Yorba, including a black wedding gown that was fashionable before the turn of the century.

The museum, at 5700 Susanna Bryant Drive, is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $2 for adults, $1 for children younger than 12. Group tours are available during the week by appointment.

Information: (714) 694-0235.