Daffodil Hill Plans for March 18th Opening Day for 2011

Daffodil Hill Plans for March 18th Opening Day for 2011
Daffodil Hill, the #1 tourist attraction in Amador County, will open its gates for its 71st season
on Friday, March 18, 2011, weather permitting. From then on, we will be open seven days a
week, 10 am to 4 pm (again weather permitting). For safety reasons, the Hill is closed when it
rains and our paths are slippery. We encourage visitors to call our recorded phone message at
(209) 296-7048 for daily updates. The Hill will stay open until fewer than 25% of the daffodil
blooms remain.
There is no admission fee and no charge for parking (donations are accepted). We only ask that
visitors respect our property and follow our few rules. These include asking that visitors stay on
our paths (and out of the flowers, buildings, and posted areas). We also ask that visitors please
leave their dogs at home, as dogs don't mix well with the flowers and our resident peacocks.
McLaughlin’s Daffodil Hill is a multi-generational project which has it’s origin in a family garden
dating from the late 1800’s. Today it has become a full scale tourist destination attracting
thousands annually to this beautiful site near Volcano, California, some 50 miles east from
either Sacramento or Stockton.
Our great-grandparents, Arthur Burbeck McLaughlin and Lizzie Van Vorst McLaughlin,
established McLaughlin Ranch, now known as Daffodil Hill, in 1887. Our grandmother, Mary
McLaughlin Lucot, was born in 1881 on adjoining property, and our great uncle, Jesse
McLaughlin, was born at the Daffodil Hill site in 1893.
The property was originally purchased from an old Dutchman named Pete Denzer, who had
planted daffodils from his native land around his homesite. Daffodils were a good choice as
they are left untouched by both deer and gophers. These yellow blooms became greatgrandmother Lizzie’s most prized possessions, and she divided and replanted the bulbs each
year to increase the size of her garden.
At the time the ranch was purchased in 1887, it served as a way-station for teamsters and
others traveling the road from Kit Carson Pass over what later became California State Highway
Route 88. The McLaughlin’s continued the way-station operation, renting rooms, and serving
meals (breakfast for 25 cents) to the travelers and providing feed and shelter for their animals.
For many years the loft of the ranch barn that still stands today, was used for “Saturday Night”
dances for guests and neighbors.
Arthur McLaughlin was the elected Supervisor for his district in Amador County for several
years. This, together with mining, farming and “inn-keeping”, kept the family in food, clothing
and supplies. They also hauled logs down to the lower county for the building of those gold
mines and also manufactured charcoal for use by nearby gold mines.
Arthur passed away in 1912 and eleven years later, in 1923, the 17 room, 2 ½ story boarding
house burned down and a small cabin was built as Lizzie’s new home. The original ranch bunk
house and larder room have been remodeled over the years into living quarters for ranch
caretakers.
Following their mother Lizzie’s death in 1935, Jesse and his sister Mary decided to plant
additional daffodils in her memory. More daffodils were planted in tribute every year, with the
help of Mary’s children, Arthur Lucot and Mary Lucot Ryan, just a few at a time - and soon
people began to stop at the ranch to admire the blooms. As the groups of tourists grew, so
grew the plantings until the few hundred planted annually, grew to a few thousand. Now every
year we plant between 8 and 12 thousand new bulbs - mainly daffodils but also tulips.
Approximately 6 acres of the 540 acre Daffodil Hill ranch is dedicated to our daffodils. We
feature as many as 300 varieties and, if the weather cooperates, 500,000 annual blooms. The
number of bulbs planted each year depends, in part, upon the donations we receive from you,
our welcome guests. There is no admission charge or parking fee to visit our family ranch, but
we do have yellow teakettles and pots around so that anyone, if they desire, may donate to our
project.
It is in October, November and December each year that we do our annual bulb planting. The
family orders the bulbs earlier in the year and another work project gets the daffodils planted in
the late fall. In January and February of the following year we do ranch clean- up, bench and
table repair, fence work, some painting and a lot of weeding and raking leaves. Come midMarch, we’re ready for our guests. Once again, you will find our immediate and extended
family and friends donating their time to greet you, direct traffic, sell postcards and answer
your questions during your visit.
Each year from approximately mid-March to mid-April, 7 days a week from 10 am to 4 pm,
weather permitting, our family ranch is open to the public. People come from long distances to
wander the planted hillsides, gaze at the farm animals, the old buildings and historic barn, take
great pictures and remember past family outings to this special place. We have seen as many as
4,000 visitors on a given day.
As our mother, Mary Lucot Ryan so eloquently wrote years before, “Many people have asked
why we have created this spot of beauty. Perhaps it is because we enjoy seeing the bulbs
blossom forth each springtime, so symbolic of Easter and the Resurrection. Perhaps it is
because we want to keep the ‘old home place’ from falling to ruin and neglect as so many of
these old country places are doing. In part too, it is our way of perpetuating the memory of our
parents, grandparents and those early-day farm folk whose way of life was so hard and so
different from our present way of life. Much of the earthly gold has been taken from the hills of
this Gold Rush area, but we hope that the new rush of golden blooms will give our visitors
something to take away with them, not a treasure of ore, but a memorable bullion of flowering
loveliness and a sense of God at work in this act of our sharing with them.”
In 2006 we lost our uncle Arthur Lucot and in 2008, the last of their generation, both of our
parents, Martin and Mary Ryan. We are the next generation of our family to undertake the
responsibility of continuing the operation of Daffodil Hill in honor of our parents, as they had
done to honor theirs.
Thank you for coming to this wonderful place and for helping us continue this family tradition.
George W. Ryan
Martin A. Ryan
Michael E. Ryan