ACCIDENTAL FIRE BURNS DOWN HISTORIC HOME
Far View House, a historic home near Marysville, tragically burned in a fire last week.
According to Cal Fire fire captain Jacob Gilliam, at 12:54 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 27, Cal Fire responded to the house, which was fully engulfed in flames. Butte Canyon Volunteer Fire Department, Foothill Volunteer Fire and Loma Rica departments also responded. Despite their best efforts, the home was completely burned.
“The house was completely engulfed in fire when firefighters responded,” Gilliam said.
Cal Fire ruled the fire’s cause accidental by an electrical problem or from cigarette butts that were burning just outside. The fire spread to vegetation on 1/8 of the house’s acres and was quickly contained.
According to an email from Walt Schafer, who was involved with the historic home’s camp and school, in 1936, Harry and Faith Drobish founded Far View Ranch Camp on the land, which continued as a summer camp under the ownership and direction of four generations for thousands of children from Northern California and throughout the country, as well as the Caribbean, Sarajevo and Europe for 80 years, until 2016.
“My family and I were associated with the camp and school between 1970 and 1975 while I was teaching at UC Davis. Second-generation camp owners, Chuck and Joy Palmerlee, were close family friends. My family moved to Chico where I taught at Chico State from 1975 to 2004,” said Schafer. Schafer is an emeritus professor of sociology at Chico State.
The home was built on 1,000 acres purchased in 1921 by Harry and Faith Drobish. Harry Drobish was an agriculture graduate from UC Davis and Faith Drobish was a graduate of UC Berkeley.
According to an email from Schafer, between 1948 and 1950, Harry Drobish served one term as State Senator and was defeated for a second term, largely because of opposition from the Chico Enterprise-Record, due to Sen. Drobish’s sponsorship of legislation creating farm labor camps and a law allowing for margarine companies to add yellow coloring, both of which the E-R opposed.
Before she died, Faith Drobish wrote a comprehensive decade-by-decade history of the ranch through the 1980s which is located at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library. Harry Drobish’s documents as a senator are also located there.
According to Schafer, the 50-acre part of the ranch where the burned home is located is no longer owned by the Drobish-Palmerlee family. It had recently been used as a sober living facility for veterans. However, the family still owns the remaining 900 acres on which cattle owned by agriculture faculty at Chico State still graze.
Far View Ranch was a working overnight camp. Generations of six to 16-year-old campers attended the twoweek camp, which ran from 1936 to 2019. Campers engaged in chores, horseback riding, pottery, games, martial arts, swinging on swings and kayaking, to name a few activities.
Ruth Palmerlee lived at the house with her husband for seven years. Between 1972 and 1980, the camp also was home to a small one-year alternative residential elementary/secondary school, mainly attended by former campers. Twenty-five horses as well as other animals lived at the ranch.
The kids slept in cabins on the property with screen windows. “
The place was funky,” Palmerlee said. “People were careful all of the time.”
Some children and grandchildren of famous people attended the camp, which included children or grandchildren of CK McClatchy, Ansel Adams, Barbara Boxer, Timothy Leary, Art Hoppe, Edward Teller, and Hopkins of Marc Hopkins Hotel.
Palmerlee’s grandparents owned the house at one point. Palmerlee, part of the third generation of camp owners and operators, ran the camp along with her husband, Peter Lea, and was involved with drama productions at the house.
This included a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank”, which was performed during a big rainstorm in 1975. “It was a very dramatic production,” Schafer said. Palmerlee is a retired theatre professor at Chico State.
Palmerlee has been grieving the loss of the house.
“I grew up there, it’s a part of who I am,” she said. “It’s a loss of the soul and heart rather than just a building.”
Palmerlee said that the ranch was intended to be as non-fancy as possible.
“We never tried to make it a slick place,” Palmerlee said. “We wanted it to be a ranch.”
Campers were not allowed electronic devices and if they wanted to communicate with friends or family at home, they had to write actual letters on paper.
Campers signed up for chores and made bread and were responsible for milking cows, pasteurizing milk, making ice cream and picking blackberries.
“Doing chores made them feel important to the community,” Palmerlee said. Palmerlee said that after campers returned home after the two weeks, they actually asked their parents if they could do chores.
“They wanted to be active and have responsibilities,” Palmerlee said.
Palmerlee’s nephew ran the camp at one point. Some of the campers became staff later, such as kitchen workers.
The house was also haunted by happy spirits. After the fire, Palmerlee walked to the fireplace, which was still standing. She brushed away the ashes on the hearth. Her grandfather had built the fireplace by hand.
“I’ll keep it in my memory,” she said.
Palmerlee’s brother John Palmerlee and his wife Robin Setchko were counselors at the camp. They knew each other as children, got married and ran the camp for several years. When they stopped, Ruth Palmerlee ran it with her husband, Pete Lea.
Her brother David ran it for three years.
Ruth Palmerlee had a dream right after the house burned, where she walked through the house, and people were cooking and playing music. She saw people that had died, and the spirits were there celebrating.
“It was like a wake,” she said. “It’s a celebration of life well-lived. It was a wonderful dream.”