Healdsburg street echoes with memories of forgotten war

Bailhache Avenue, across the Russian River from downtown Healdsburg, is named for Josephine Fitch Bailhache and her husband, John. She was the daughter of Henry Fitch, who received the 49,000-acre property of Rancho Sotoyome as a land grant after becoming a Mexican citizen in the early 1840s.

The treaty that ended the Mexican-American War in 1848 stipulated that Mexican landowners could keep their property in U.S. territory if they could prove they had owned it under Mexican law. Locally, this applied to about two dozen large ranchos, covering half the county.

Federal “land courts” were set up to hear testimony, examine evidence and determine the validity of the land claims, although cases often took more than a decade to be resolved. It was a confusing time, with the county‘s best land in legal limbo as thousands of settlers poured in.

Since property titles could not be guaranteed, buying land was risky. Even so, many settlers purchased land from the original rancho owners, trusting that the legalities would get sorted out. Others built homes, started farms and raised families on property they did not own. By the early 1860s, John and Josephine Bailhache were decreed the legal owners of their ranch, but dozens of squatters had already taken up residence there. In defiance of the land court’s decision, the squatters paraded through Healdsburg “with music and banners waving,” then came after John and forced him into hiding.

In response, the sheriff organized a posse of 230 unarmed men to pay the squatters a visit. When they arrived at the first squatter’s house, an armed force of equal size greeted them. Outgunned, the sheriff withdrew and called in the state militia, which was stationed in Petaluma.

As the militia moved in, Josephine Fitch Bailhache hired Captain L. A. Norton to assist them. Norton was a Mexican-American War veteran who had been successful in similar situations. Once the militia cleared the squatters from their homes, John Bailhache began tearing down their fences. Two shots rang out from a squatter hiding in the brush. One of Bailhache’s hired men was severely wounded in the leg and died soon after.

Angered, Norton treated the squatters’ homes like “rats’ nests,” throwing out their belongings and burning the structures to the ground.

By the time he was done, all that remained were “heaps of smoldering ruins.” When Norton moved on to deal with the squatters on Tzaboco Rancho, he found them much more willing to negotiate.

With Bailhache Ranch secured, John and Josephine Bailhache built their own large home on their property and lived into the early years of the 20th century.

By then, the Squatters’ War was only a distant memory.