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Hagemann Ranch Historic District new article content ...

Location of the Property

The remnant of the Hagemann Ranch (1854-1930), namely the core five acres with barns, corrals, and ranch house is at 455 Olivina Avenue, Livermore, CA 94551

The land reverted to the City of Livermore and in 2007 became registered as the Hagemann Ranch Historic District.

Current Usage

The non-profit all-volunteer Livermore Heritage Guild began management of the property under the auspices of the City of Livermore. A non-profit 4-H youth chapter set up beekeeping hives, uses the barns, corrals, and riding arena for rescued horses. A non-profit, Sunflower Gardens, uses about an acre of the property for year-round educational gardens. The general public has monthly access during thematic open house events which sometimes includes hayrides pulled by antique tractors.

Original Owners and Usage of the Property

In The Independent newspaper, columnist (and official City Historian) Ann Homan described the earliest buildings, the race horses of Martin Mendenhall, and the 1985 interview with Herbert Hagemann.

Martin Mendenhall

Martin Mendenhall was born in Greene County, Ohio, in 1828. His parents moved to Cass County, Michigan, in 1834. There he worked his father’s farm until March 1849, when he started for California with ox-teams by way of the plains, arriving in Sacramento on 9/9/1849.

Here meeting his brother William Mendenhall, they moved together to Santa Clara Valley until March 1850. Martin started for the mines at Chinese Camp, near Sonora, Tuolumne County, and after laboring four months left in disgust to rejoin his brother in Santa Clara. He went into raising and trading cattle. In the fall of 1852, he returned to Michigan.

In February 1853, he married Miss Malvina Dolora Knapp, by whom he had five children, only three of whom survived: Clara, Julia, and Dora. That March, Martin came once more across the plains accompanied by his new bride. They arrived in Santa Clara about the middle of September 1853. He resumed his former occupation of stock-raising. In 1854, he moved to San Ramon Valley as a squatter on Bernal's Rancho property (which he paid $4000 for 400 acres in US Courts in 1863) following agricultural and pastoral pursuits for eleven years.

He sold out in 1865 and came to Livermore Valley where he reared excellent horses, cattle, and good crops. Contrary to lore that the farmhouse was built in 1836, later architects (and the historical timeline above) could only prove the original East-to-West section of the farmhouse was built in 1870. There might have been an older ranch-hand shack nearby prior to the the Mendenhall 1865 purchase.

Martin added an egg processing room and a tack room with jockey quarters for his horse business. He raised and raced trotting horses. His racetrack in 1876 was a half-mile track in a large open area for some hundred spectators. Martin sold the farmstead in 1890 and died in December 1898 from a cancerous growth on one of his hands.

August Hagemann

August Hagemann bought 185 acres from Martin Mendenhall in 1890 and lived there until 1906. He leased out the Ranch until his son Herbert Luders Hagemann (Sr) moved there in 1916.

Herbert Hagemann

Herbert Luders Hagemann (Jr) was born on the Hagemann Ranch 1/19/1921, 2.5 miles west of the Livermore downtown flagpole on what used to be the end of Olivina Avenue. The population of Livermore was only about 2,000. He was interviewed in 1985 as part of an Oral History project and shared his memories of businesses, schools, scandals, stills, politicians, among other topics.