Sonoma Wineries:
Jack
London in the Sonoma Valley
Born in San Francisco in 1876, the son of an itinerant astrologer/journalist and a spiritualist, Jack London hung around the Oakland docks as a teenager, taking up with a gang of oyster pirates on the bay. He sailed to Japan and the Bering Sea as a seventeen-year-old seaman, and came home to write his first published story, “Typhoon off the Coast of Japan.”
Joining the Socialist Labor Party, he hoboed around the country, got arrested for vagrancy in New York and explored the Klondike for gold in 1897, always writing. His adventure novel, The Call of the Wild, was published in 1903, catapulting him into public notice and enabling him to purchase his “Beauty Ranch” on the west side of the Sonoma Valley.
Interrupting his orchard and vineyard planting, and home-building, he and his wife, Charmian had “The Snark,” a 55-foot yacht, built in San Francisco, and they set off for what they intended to be a round-the-world voyage. They sailed to Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti and the Solomon's, ending the trip on the island of Guadacanal, where Jack became ill and decided to return home.
Jack London Historic State Park »
The article on this page is adapted from the book, Backroads of the California Wine Country by Karen Misuraca (www.karenmisuraca.com), published by Voyageur Press.
Photo Credit: The pictures on this page are by Lisa Moore. www.studioponderosa.com