A 19th century German winemaker’s earthen house endures in California’s Gold Country
Today, those who travel by road between California’s capital city of Sacramento towards the mountain resort towns of Lake Tahoe do so via interstate Highways 50 or 80. However, in the early 20th century, automobile travelers going between those two regions took the then-main thoroughfare of the Placerville-Tahoe Road, which included portions of modern Deer Valley and Green Valley Roads. This foothills route passed by a curious-looking landmark house built by German immigrant Jacob Zentgraf in 1871 just beside the former horse-and-wagon road, like so many 19th century rural houses. The Zentgraf House remains today as a waypoint for locals and bicyclists traveling through the obscure El Dorado County mining and agricultural town of Rescue. The wooden plank top story overhanging a smooth walled building beneath that I’ve heard people inquire after as “the one that looks like it’s made of old-fashioned concrete?” stands out from the other ranch houses among the oaks. Beyond that local novelty, however, the rammed earth, wood, and steel building has significant ties to California’s German immigration and wine-making history as well as industrial age European politics and earth-building history. In its endurance, the Zentgraf House also hints at the promise of the continuing use of sustainable earth buildings.
Rammed earth at its most basic is the product of tightly compacting suitable moist earth into temporary forms with ramming tools, and then removing the forms to let the walls dry and harden. The gravel in the soil provides structure, while the clay in particular binds together the formed walls. The walls may then be finished in plaster.
The house that Zentgraf built remains on a 105 acre parcel on the west side of Deer Valley Road. The building’s roof is covered with corrugated metal panels, with wooden rafters visible from underneath the front porch. The second story of the building is wood frame with three glazed, twelve-paned windows on each gable end. The wood frame second story overhangs the first and is supported by wooden posts with piers set on the stone foundation. The first story of the building is constructed of rammed earth, with six recessed, twelve-paned windows and three doors, and three windows of the same twelve-paned design on each gable end — allowing for plenty of natural light and ventilation into the house. The walls are plastered, though weathered and revealing the rammed earth beneath in several locations.
A front-gabled stone wine cellar with a rectangular footprint and wood frame second story, built in the 1850s, and reportedly rebuilt after a fire at an unknown date, possibly in the 1890s, sits directly across from the house on the east side of the road. The wine cellar also has corrugated metal panel roofing and two distinct wood-frame sections behind and in addition to the gabled building.
The main alteration to the Zentgraf House appears to be the corrugated metal sheeting roof, likely installed to protect the wood roof and second story from fire and better preserve the earthen walls from seasonal rains. The original roof appears to be shingle in historic photos. The wine cellar is reported to have been rebuilt after a fire at some point, but it is implied that only the second wood frame story and interior were damaged, and that the fieldstone and mortar sections are original to the 1850s.
The Zentgraf House has integrity of place, design, setting, workmanship, feeling, and association. The House’s notable pre-automobile proximity to Deer Valley Road in rural Rescue, El Dorado County, and eye-catching unusual rammed-earth workmanship convey the building’s historic significance.
Ethnic History: German Immigration to Northern California during the Gold Rush Era
Germanic immigrants pushed from their lands of origin by political and economic factors in the 1840s-50s were initially attracted to immigrate to the Sacramento area by German-language articles and books that extolled Swiss Germanophone John Augustus Sutter’s Fort and New Helvetia Colony. Karl D. Weber, a prominent German-born settler, began California life as Sutter’s employee in 1839 (where he found the Fort enterprises dependent on exploiting the coerced labor of Native Californians, a strategy that Weber would later, condemnably, adopt in his own Gold Rush mining company), and also adopted the Spanish name “Carlos Maria Weber,” becoming a naturalized Mexican citizen. After the US conquest of California and Gold Rush, Weber founded Tuleburg, later known as Stockton, in alliance with the local Miwok and Yokuts people (including Weber’s personal friend, Chief José Jesus). Another German contemporary of Sutter, Theodore Cordua, built an adobe trading post in what is today Marysville, CA.
Later, German immigrants settled in Sacramento, where they would establish a unique cultural identity among other Euro-American settlers. German Americans, 51% of whom worked in professional or middle-class occupations such as merchandizing, trade, and skilled labor in Sacramento during 1852, were noted for their prioritization of sociability and festivity – which they considered respectable even on Sundays, in contrast to more sober Anglo-American customs and notions of respectability. German Americans in the Sacramento area quickly established shooting clubs and musical and dance events where both men and women were encouraged to attend and to socially imbibe wine and beer. In 1854, just after the Zentgraf brothers Jacob and Antone’s arrival to the Sacramento area, the city’s German community formed its own Turnverein fraternal community, following one that had been established earlier in San Francisco.
Agricultural History: Viticulture in El Dorado County from Gold Rush until Prohibition
The Mr. Stevens who sold German immigrant brothers Jacob and Antone Zentgraf the property at 2441 Deer Valley Road in 1854 was the first winemaker in El Dorado County, establishing a vineyard of 36 vines in 1849 on the property that he would later sell to Zentgraf. Between 1857–1870 there were 12 El Dorado County wineries, increasing to 28 wineries covering 2,100 acres in the county by 1904. Although the Gold Rush had initiated a notoriously strong demand for wine and brandy in mining regions, the decline of mining in El Dorado County decreased the county’s population along with the former demand for viticultural products. Combined with a nationwide agricultural downturn in the 1870s and a lack of outside markets besides San Francisco, El Dorado County winemaking continued a decline that culminated in the devastating effects of Prohibition in 1920.
Rammed earth rural construction as developed in 18th/19th century Europe
Architect Francois Cointereaux (1740–1830) re-developed the traditional rural French “pisé de tierre” rammed-earth construction techniques that he had witnessed growing up in the Rhone valley as a universal program towards improved quality of rural life. Inspired, in fact, by wine presses, Cointereaux designed a rammed earth press, called a crécise, and developed a style of rammed earth construction that used various sizes of rammed earth blocks. Cointereaux emphasized the affordability, dignity, and fire resistance of rammed-earth construction, as well as its connection to Roman building techniques, fitting the technique into the vogue for Neoclassicism during the French Revolution. Rammed earth buildings fit revolutionary ideals in their lack of class associations (unlike scarce lumber or expensive brick and stone) and had the practical benefits of material availability and durable safety during an era of deforestation, fuel shortages, and devastating fires from social instability and war.
These considerations also applied to the other countries affected by the Napoleonic Wars, including the various pre-unification German states such as Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Architect David Gilly (1748–1808) expanded on Cointereaux’s work and promoted pisé rural buildings in Germany. Wilhelm Jacob Wimpf was a German architect who built more than twenty rammed earth residential buildings in the town of Weilburg an der Lahn in the 1820s.
Rammed earth regained notice in East Germany during the 1950s, as seen with these DDR rammed earth public housing buildings built sustainably with local materials to save cost.
Jacob Zentgraf and Family History
Jacob Zentgraf was born in the Germanic Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1821. Zentgraf took up the trade of stonecutter from his father and lived and worked in the region where he was born until the age of 31, during which time he may have encountered or helped to build the foundations for rammed earth buildings. Family histories imply that political repression in the German duchies around 1848 may have pushed Jacob Zentgraf and his brother Antone to immigrate to the United States. The brothers initially travelled to Pennsylvania and then emigrated to California in December 1853. Jacob Zentgraf found employment as a stonecutter and engaged in some gold mining at Weber Creek in El Dorado County.
The Zentgraf brothers purchased 520 acres in Sweetwater (later Rescue), El Dorado County in 1854 from Mr. Stevens, who had imported the first non-Mission grapes to El Dorado County from New England in 1849. The property had a small cabin as its only building. The Zentgrafs first added the two-story winery building with a stone and mortar first floor and a second wood frame story. The winery’s first floor was divided into a bar and two wine storage areas. Jacob bought out Antone’s share of the property in 1857 and continued to grow his vineyard, adding a distillery to his wine-making operations in 1859 that added twelve to fourteen gallons of brandy per season to his four to six thousand gallons of wine. Zentgraf added other rammed-earth buildings to the property – a smoke house/bakery and a granary – that would not survive until the present day, unlike the main house, due to their wooden roofs burning up in fires and exposing the earthen walls to weathering elements during the twentieth century.
In 1858, Zentgraf married a 25-year-old neighbor, Maria, who had also immigrated from Germany. The couple had nine children between 1859 and 1875. In 1871 Jacob built the two-story rammed earth and wood house across the road from the winery to house his growing family. The exterior walls were originally twenty-two inches thick at the base, tapering towards the ceiling. The Zentgrafs hosted Saturday night dances and occasional banquets at this house. The interior, divided into three rooms for family use, had hinged walls that could be hooked into the ceiling, creating one spacious room for dancing. The upper floor was accessible through an interior staircase. Doubtless, Zentgraf wines and brandies flowed at these occasions.
Jacob Zentgraf became well-known in El Dorado County as a successful vintner, as well as a familiar face to tourists travelling past the Zentgraf House on the Placerville-Tahoe Road in the first decade of the twentieth century. George Frederick, the eldest Zentgraf son, was a locally renowned crack shot who competed in Sacramento shooting club events. Frank, the youngest Zentgraf, gained more notoriety for his involvement with firearms, dying in a shootout with his brother-in-law at the Zentgraf property in 1914. Jacob, the second youngest Zentgraf son, was the last of the family to remain at the property, living in the rammed earth house until 1948, although he sold the property to the Frank Gerken six years earlier in 1942.
Nineteenth century rammed earth buildings are uncommon in Northern California, likely because of the maintenance that earthen buildings require in a Mediterranean climate with a rainy season. (the high thermal mass of rammed earth buildings provides a distinct advantage during hot California summers, as the walls absorb heat during the day and release it at night.) Spanish and Mexican colonists did not settle in the area that would become El Dorado County, and therefore left none of the adobe buildings that endure in other parts of the state. The 1851 Chew Kee Store rammed earth building, now a museum, preserves Chinese American Gold Rush era history in Fiddletown, California. However, the Chew Kee Store was produced with Chinese rammed earth construction techniques (which I will explore further in a planned article about the Store as well as renowned herbalist Doctor Yee Fung Chueng). Zentgraf’s background as a stonecutter in early 19th century Europe and the introduction of building practices that he likely learned there give the Zentgraf House a separate cultural significance.
Sources
Bowen, Mary. “Interesting Detour Into the Past.” The Folsom Telegraph. August 20, 1964. Personal Collection: Rodi Lee, El Dorado County Historical Society.
Clarksville Region Historical Society. “Historic Zentgraf Winery.” Accessed on May 18, 2021. http://www.edhhistory.org/zentgraf-2008-tour.html
El Dorado and Alpine Counties. “2015 Agricultural Crop & Livestock Report: A Short History of Winemaking in El Dorado County.” -Accessed on May 18, 2021. https://www.edcgov.us/Government/ag/documents/2015%20Crop%20Report.pdf.
El Dorado County: Office of the Assessor. Historical Property Information: Parcel Number: 102–190–20–100: Property Address: 2441 Deer Valley Rd. Last Appraisal Effective Date: 05/14/2013. Accessed on May 18, 2021. blob:https://parcel.edcgov.us/9d41541f-5ae3-411a-9b2f-ce4cd53a76aa.
— -. Value Notice. January 1, 2020. https://common1.mptsweb.com/megabytecommonsite/(S(ctwdexbsel5cztsd0zakwefx))/PublicInquiry/Inquiry.aspx?CN=eldorado&SITE=Public&DEPT=Asr&PG=AsrMain&Asmt=102190020000.
Folsom Telegraph. “Zentgraf Home Retains Antiquity.” November 21, 1973. Personal Collection: Rodi Lee, El Dorado County Historical Society.
“Gold Pan Biscuits — Zentgraf House; Rescue, 2020.” YouTube video, December 13, 2020. https://youtu.be/S4kW1vmAG14.
Gramlich, Ashley Nicolle. “A Concise History of the Use of the Rammed Earth Building Technique Including Information on Methods of Preservation, Repair, and Maintenance.” MS thesis, Graduate School of the University of Oregon, 2013. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36687567.pdf.
Hodson, Dawn. “Mountain lions killed in Rescue.” Mountain Democrat. September 24, 2012. https://www.mtdemocrat.com/news/mountain-lions-killed-in-rescue/
Oakland Tribune. “The Zentgraf Home.” August 6, 1950. Personal Collection: Rodi Lee, El Dorado County Historical Society.
— -. “Grape Pioneer.” August 13, 1950. Personal Collection: Rodi Lee, El Dorado County Historical Society.
Punnett Brothers. Map of the County of El Dorado, California: compiled from the official records and surveys. [San Francisco, Cal.: Punnett Bros, 1895] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012590101.
Sacramento Daily Union. “Aged Pioneer Gone.” July 1, 1911. California Digital Newspaper Collection.
Sioli, Paolo. Historical Souvenir of El Dorado County California with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men & Pioneers. Oakland: Paolo Sioli, 1883. Kindle.
Terry, Carole C. “Germans in Sacramento, 1850–1859.” Psi Sigma Siren 3, no. 1 (2005). https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/psi_sigma_siren/vol3/iss1/1/.
Uelman, Don. “The Zentgraf Family History.” El Dorado County Historical Society: Newsletter. September 2007: 3–8.
— -.“The Zentgraf Family History.” El Dorado County Historical Society: Tailings. April/May (2006): 6–8.
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*all photos without a citation are the author’s own and may be reused citing my Medium handle
- *adapted from a draft DPR 523 I wrote in 2021, so apologies for all descriptive superfluity
tags: Historic preservation architecture
