10385 Shadow Oak Drive
Chatsworth, CA, USA

Minnie Hill Palmer House

The Minnie Hill Palmer House, also known as The Homestead Acre, is the only remaining homestead cottage in the San Fernando Valley. The cottage is a redwood Stick-Eastlake style American Craftsman-Bungalow located on a 1.3-acre (0.53 ha) site in Chatsworth Park South in the Chatsworth section of Los Angeles, California.


History

Exercising their rights under the Homestead Act, James David and Rhonda Jane Hill settled in 1886 on 110 acres (45 ha) of land in what is now Chatsworth. The ranch was later expanded to 230 acres (93 ha) when the Hills bought an adjoining 120-acre (49 ha) ranch where the old stage stop, abandoned with the arrival of the railroads, had been located. Today, a 1.3 acres (5,300 m2) portion has been preserved and been recognized as a historic site. In late 1886, the Hills' seventh child, Minnie (1886-1981) was born on the ranch. The Hill family built the surviving three-bedroom bungalow between 1911 and 1913 after the original homestead was torn down.

Minnie Hill married Alfred Palmer in 1908 and moved to Hawthorne, California, later relocating to Montana where she and her husband farmed.[5] Minnie Hill Palmer and her husband returned to the Chatsworth homestead in 1920 when Minnie's mother became ill. Minnie's brother, Lovell Hill, ran the homestead with the Palmers and operated a dynamite supply business from the site.[4] Lovell inherited the property upon the death of their mother, and Minnie inherited it when Lovell died. Her husband died in the 1940s, and she sold the ranch to the City of Los Angeles in 1956 for development into a city golf course and rifle range, with the condition that she maintain a life estate allowing her to live rent- and tax-free on the remaining homestead parcel. Palmer continued to live at the cottage until age 90, raising vegetables, canning fruit, and living in the pioneer style. She used an antique handplow to work on her fruits and vegetables every morning, plowing land located alongside the golf course, often having to remove errant golf balls as well as weeds from her garden. She continued to raise her own fruits and vegetables and canned 300 jars of old-fashioned jelly each year for Christmas gifts. She later recalled that gophers and coyotes were always a problem on the ranch. When fires devastated the area in 1970, she refused to evacuate and worked alongside firefighters to save the old homestead. The one modern convenience Ms. Palmer enjoyed was television soap operas, which she watched faithfully from 11 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. after working in the garden. When a reporter from the Los Angeles Times visited the homestead in 1968 to write a feature article about her, she cut the interview short at 11 a.m., noting that she refused to speak to visitors or answer the phone while her soap operas were on. She suffered a stroke in 1976 and spent her final years at the Mountain View Sanatarium in Sylmar, California. Palmer died in March 1981 at age 94.

Ownership and operation as a museum

The Homestead Acre and Palmer House have been preserved as they were in 1911 when the surviving cottage was built. It is owned by the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and maintained by the Chatsworth Historical Society as a monument to the pioneers who homesteaded the San Fernando Valley. The city maintains the building's exterior, and the Chatsworth Historical Society maintains the interior. The park was closed in early 2008 when lead contamination was found, but the park re-opened in April 2008 after being found to be safe. The Chatsworth Historical Society conducts tours of the cottage by appointment for groups of 10 or more and on the first Sunday of the month from 1-4 p.m. Many of the trees and flowers on the property were planted by Minnie Hill Palmer and her family. According to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, the Palmer House has become a popular location for weddings and private parties and is also rented as a movie location.

Historic designation

The Hill Palmer House was designated as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM #133) in 1974. Members of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission noted that the house warranted monument status based on the significant life cycle of Ms. Palmer at the property and the part she and her family and house played in the area's history. It was also listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It is the last remaining homestead in the San Fernando Valley.

National Register of Historic Places - Minnie Hill Palmer House

Statement of Significance:

The Minnie Hill Palmer Homestead Acre is the only pioneer cottage with surrounding garden and fruit trees left in the West San Fernando Valley. It is important to local history because it is the kind of cottage and surrounding garden and fruit trees that sustained the many early settlers who migrated to the area and settled in the vast San Fernando Valley. Today, the Valley is a major suburban area of the City of Los Angeles.

At one time there were many such cottages and gardens in the San Fernando Valley, but the Minnie Hill Palmer Cottage and surrounding homestead acre is the only one known to Valley historians that is still intact on the same land and virtually unchanged since it was built in 1911. The land has remained in the same family from the time Rhoda Jane Endow Hill and her Civil War veteran husband James David Hill took up squatter's rights on the 110 acres in the spring of 1886. Later they bought an adjoining 120 acres.

The Hills were one of the early families in the West San Fernando Valley, probably the fourth to homestead in the area of Chatsworth before it had a name.

Mr. Hill was a peddler who sold fruit to the workers who built the Chatsworth tunnels and drove the wagon that delivered the dynamite for blasting. The dynamite shed is still standing in Chatsworth Park South nearby (but not on the nominated acre). Mrs. Hill and her daughters did the washing and ironing for the men who built the Chatsworth tunnels.

Lovell Hill (son of Rhoda Jane and James) was one of the early postmasters and co-owner of the Graves & Hill General Store, a significant factor in the growth of the area. He was active in promoting the town of Chatsworth after it received its name in 1888.'

His sister, Minnie Hill Palmer, was born on the land in the fall of 1886 after her parents had arrived in the spring and lived on the homestead almost all her life, leaving for only a few short years. She lived a pioneer existence on the one remaining acre of the one-time 230-acre homestead in the midst of the growing San Fernando Valley. While the Valley grew into a modern metropolis, she continued her pioneer existence, growing her own food in the garden, canning and preserving her own fruits and vegetables until she moved to a retirement residence in January 1977.

An early house was built on the land; a second house was erected on the same site. The family lived in a tent while the house was under construction.

At the time the 1911 house was built, Chatsworth Park was one of the Valley's growing* agricultural communities--a separate town with its own identity, a Post Office, a ° railroad station, telegraph office and the already mentioned Graves & Hill General Store.

The Minnie Hill Palmer Cottage with its surrounding garden and fruit trees which the Chatsworth Historical Society choses to call "The Homestead Acre", the Old Stagecoach Road and the Pioneer Church built in 1903, are all that is left of the "old days" when the family farm was the way of life.