It was at least 60 years ago when a ranch hand built this gate – on site, by hand – for what looks like a livestock pen. Or maybe the ranch owner built the gate himself in his barn and trucked it to the site, using bits of reclaimed lumber and hardware such as you’d find on a ranch. 

Now patches of green lichen cover the gate, which was measured to stretch from one oak to another. Knotholes, bolts and nails have seen decades of weather. The only thing still bright and shiny on the wood is a small spray of BBs. Five strands of barbed wire stretch out to fence posts that have failed, leaving the barbed wire tangled in vegetation in a double-dutch for eternity.

The wood is connected in a mortise and tenon joint that’s clearly hand-cut. The gate is hinged to the tree from above with a metal strap, which doesn’t look store-bought. The tree has grown over the strap.

The ranch was one of a number of properties sold to developers 60 years ago to assemble Rancho Murieta’s 3,500 acres. With woodpeckers tap-tap-tapping on a recent afternoon, it is otherwise very quiet.

Development hasn’t come to this land, in the hills east of Lake Clementia, and maybe, given the infrastructure costs, it never will.