Lachryma Montis From the Sonoma State Historic Park Plan November, 1986. Used with permission.

Lachryma Montis: Mariano Vallejo purchased the area which became Lachryma Montis from Oliver Beauleau, or Bolieu, in November 1849 and from John McCracken in May 1850. The McCracken lot became the site for most of the outbuildings of the ranch headquarters: the almacen, or warehouse (which has become know as the chalet), a carriage shed, a “large pavilion made of bamboo, iron, and glass” which was imported from either Germany or China, a bath house, and beyond what is now the parking lot, a stable (barn) and corral.

The home was constructed in the period 1851 to 1852; on October 3, 1852, the San Francisco Daily Alta announced that “General Vallejo has just completed a beautiful cottage.” The other buildings were probably finished within the next few years. Both the house and the warehouse (i.e., the chalet) were prefabricated. In addition, Vallejo improved the fields, vineyards, and orchards, and had gardens landscaped about the house. Within two years of moving into the house, remodeling began, probably with addition of one of the two back bedrooms and changing of the “ducks and geese” lake into the reservoir. A number of alterations and improvements to the reservoir have occurred from time to time.

In addition to these structures, there was a hennery, or chicken house, and the grapery, where nursery and vineyard stock could be started and grown to rooted stock status. As the years passed, Vallejo remodeled the house several times, constructed a new separate kitchen with an employees’ dining room and quarters for the cook, and built the Hermitage, which Vallejo called “The Guest House,” but which has traditionally been called “Napoleon Vallejo’s Cottage” (with limited evidence to support the later title). Vallejo had also build a small structure known as El Delirio, a second garden pavilion. El Delirio may have begun life as a gazebo, and then was altered as a small office, where Vallejo reputedly wrote the second copy of his “La Historia de California.” The first draft, three complete volumes and notes for the fourth, burned in the Casa Grande fire in 1867. It may have been nearly a decade before Vallejo attempted the effort again. While early maps show a structure west of the house, no positive identification of this structure and El Delirio has been made. In fact, El Delirio may have existed in a totally different area until moved to its current site by the Works project Administration during the min-1930s restoration of grounds and structures. Other small structures, a tree house, for example, have been noted on the grounds during the Vallejo years.