Tres generaciones de narradores

Three generations of story tellers

Fortunate is the family that passes down literary skills from one generation to the next. Even more favored are the families where this trait carries on to a third generation. We, the readers, are the real beneficiaries!

A couple of weeks ago I began to look through my Baja “library” aiming for books I had not picked up in a long time. I spotted one at the end of a bookshelf that I didn’t recognize. It was a hardback book with the spine torn away completely – taking it down from the shelf, the title Peninsular California and author Charles Nordhoff were in gold upper case lettering on the front cover.




While written as a Lower California travelogue of a trip taken in the early 1880s and published in 1888, it earned Nordhoff a 50,000-acre ranch on Todos Santos Bay south of Ensenada courtesy of the Mexican International Company – who hoped Charles’ vivid descriptions of the peninsula revealed in the book would entice buyers to this “land of milk and honey.” Charles devotes several parts of Peninsular California to reassuring the target audience of mostly Americans, about the protection to land titles afforded by the agreements between the International Company of Mexico and the Mexican government. Nordhoff named his ranch Rancho Ramajal and it remained in the Nordhoff family for three generations.




So, why is the name Nordhoff familiar? Though using the pseudonym Antonio de Fierro Blanco, it was Charles’ son Walter who late in life wrote the novel The Journey of the Flame which has been described this way by Hubert Eugene Bolton: “This is a remarkable book on a fascinating subject…A thrilling narrative…There is no other book about Lower California that will give the general reader so much information and atmosphere in so agreeable a form.” It has been surmised that Walter chose not to use his own name so that he would not be judged by or compared to the previous writings of his father, or for that matter the talent his sons displayed in their writings. In this tale, it follows Juan Obrigón as the lad of only 11- or 12-years-old, who journeys the length of the Baja peninsula and Alta California as far as Monterey in a period of more than a year. And, of course what would a novel be without the mention along the way of the “Lost Santa Isabel Mission” – and a map to boot! Interestingly the first 286 pages are devoted to adventures in Lower California and Alta is dealt with in a mere 4 or 5 pages; Blanco telling us that “…all is so well-known that I will tell you only a few incidents.” Lawrence Clark Powell, identifying the best of early California Literature, devoted an entire chapter in California Classics to Journey of the Flame. Ellen C. Barrett in her Baja California 1535-1956 bibliography heaps praise on the novel when she wrote “…without a doubt the best which has been written to date. The great fault is that it has such plausible and good details that it is often taken as the truth.” Walter and his wife cared for the Todos Santos ranch, and, along with their son Charles Bernard enjoyed the many excitements ranch life offered.




The family writing tradition continued from Walter to two of his sons, Charles Bernard and Franklin W. Nordhoff. Franklin wrote Fruit of the Earth, described by desert bibliographer E.I. Edwards as “a book of short sketches, beautifully done, of desert and mountain.”

More familiar would-be the (1932-1934) historical novel trilogy Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn's Island co-written by the other son Charles Bernard Nordhoff (all three books were co-written with James Norman Hall).





Charles Bernard Nordhoff

Way beyond the scope of this article, research and a story about the International Company of Mexico mentioned earlier might make for interesting reading here on Nomad.




The Nordhoff family history in both Baja and Alta California covers a lot of ground. The family had other California interests including Walter’s part ownership in the California China Products Company in National City from 1911 until 1917.

Most of the Nordhoff family traveled extensively.

They owned several homes in California including at San Diego, Redlands, and a vacation home near Brighton Beach on Terminal Island, twenty-five miles west of downtown Los Angeles.

The Redlands home, built in the Victorian style in 1899 by Walter Nordhoff for $15,000 still stands and is one of the many historic homes on display in that city.



There is a lot if information around about this family of true Baja Nomads of an earlier period.


The two “Baja” books are readily available on the used book market, Journey of the Flame from $5.00 and Peninsular California is offered in both reprint and first editions from around $20.00. Shop here: https://www.addall.com/used/

John M





[Edited on 11-11-2021 by John M]

Oh boy, a great post John!