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The Caire Family on Santa Cruz Island During the 1870s, the economy of California took a serious fall, and for
various reasons, nine of the original Santa Cruz Island Company partners
sold their shares to Justinian Caire, a French hardware store owner in
San Francisco who was one of the original ten partners. Justinian was
an astute and cautious businessman and began preparing detailed plans
for developing the island as a profitable enterprise. He first personally
visited the island in 1880. He gained a little notoriety in San Francisco
as ‘ the crazy Frenchman’ who dug a hole in the ground under his store
where he built a fireproof cellar. When fires swept through the poorly
planned early city, his foresight proved profitable as he had time to
hide his stock underground, and was one of the few merchants in the city
with any supplies to sell after the fires swept past. |
According to his granddaughter Helen’s recounting " The island enterprise included the production of wine, wool, tallow, meat and olives. In the 1880s, workers cultivated extensive vegetable gardens which invoices show grew red and white beans, red beet, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, chervil, onion, parsley, pea, sweet pea, chili pepper, seed potato, spinach and turnip. In addition, the hands planted a variety of fruit trees including pear, apple, cherry, plum, peach, fig, pomegranate, orange and lemon.
