Last June, I was driving out Bald Hills Road. I had already passed
the Lady Bird Johnson Grove (with its easy 1-mile loop through
old-growth redwoods) and the Tall Trees Access Road (requires free
permit from visitor center and leads to a 3-mile trail through the
grove containing the tallest trees in the world) when I came to
a sign pointing to the "Lyons Ranch Historic Site". My
curiosity piqued, I pulled into the parking lot where
an interpretive sign said I could "ENJOY A HIKE on this
historic trail as it winds downhill for two miles and ends at the
Home Place". So I walked down
the trail (actually a dirt road), enjoying
the Bald Hills, and soon (in about half an hour) came to a
group of abandoned buildings (including a
barn and
bunkhouse). I explored the area and took lots of pictures
before heading back to the car (be sure to read the
February 8, 1912 Humboldt Times on a wall in the bunkhouse).
Upon my return, I reread the sign and noticed: "The barn and
bunkhouse still stand near the orchard and family cemetery of
Jonathan Lyons". Cemetery? So back down I went to find the cemetery
(did I mention it was a pretty warm day?). After a bit of a search,
I finally found it
(the cemetery). And when you go seek this cache, you'll need to
find it, too (and maybe even see
a herd of Roosevelt elk on the trail, like I did).
The coordinates lead you to the horse barn (but no water to
drink, so take your own). To log this cache, you must find the
cemetery and:
-
Email me the first name, birth year, and death year from the
headstone
- Post a picture of you and your GPSr
(example) when you log your find
FTF prize is one
pair of custom-made, hand-knit Merino wool socks.
I returned in July to get more information on Jonathan Lyons and
the "Home Place". The folks at the visitor center in Orick gave me
the name of a park ranger who supplied me with most of the
information summarized below: 
Jonathan Lyons was born in Indiana in 1832 and spent some of his
childhood in Iowa. As a teenager, he arrived in the Willamette
Valley via the Oregon Trail. He eventually came to the Salmon River
country of Northern California sometime after 1853 to try his hand
at mining but ended up as a butcher, supplying fresh meat and
vegetables to the miners (he had planted the first garden at Forks
of Salmon in the spring of 1856). He was still at Forks at the time
of the 1860 census but probably left shortly afterward since his
first child (Anderson) was born to a Hupa woman (whom he called
Amelia) in December 1863. They had six more children before and
after they were married in 1866: Sherman (1865 or 66), Harvey
(about 1868), Antonio (also known as Antone, born in the Bald Hills
in January 1870), William (1872), Josephine (1876), and Julius
(1879).
It is unknown exactly when they moved to the Bald Hills, but it
was probably sometime after a peace treaty was signed in Hoopa
Valley in 1864 and before Antone's birth in 1870. They had been
living on and using the land for some time before legally acquiring
title to about 3200 acres (including the homesite and lands in the
Coyote Creek drainage) over a ten or eleven year period beginning
in 1877 or '78. They probably raised cattle and hogs until Jonathan
drove 900 head of fine-wool Merino sheep over the hills from Colusa
County in the summer of 1873 (he was the first settler to bring
sheep from the Central Valley to Humboldt County). By the turn of
the century, Humboldt County was known worldwide for the quality of
its wool (Jonathan won a blue ribbon for his wool at the Paris
Exposition of 1900).
Beginning in 1888, Jonathan began giving land to Sherman and
Antone (who continued as sheep ranchers) until sometime after the
turn of the century, when all that remained in Jonathan and
Amelia's names was a life estate to a four acre tract surrounding
their house. The house (and barn) had burned to the ground in 1897
and were rebuilt (the current barn is believed to be from that
period). The house burned down again in 1911; Antone rebuilt on the
site but that house burned down sometime after 1920.
During the period of divestiture, 1400 acres of land or timber
rights were sold off to lumber companies. After Jonathan's death in
1913 (Amelia died in 1921, Anderson had already passed away in
1914; the three of them are buried in the cemetery in Blue Lake),
Antone and Sherman had almost 3800 head of sheep. Sherman's widow
sold their ranch out of the family in 1942, but Eugene (Antone's
only son) received his father's lands in 1945 and continued sheep
ranching until the early 1960's. Gene died in 1972, ending three
generations of family ranching in the Bald Hills.
The little cemetery contains only one headstone but may also
contain the remains of one or two Indian ranch hands. Most of the
sons married Indian or half-Indian women and most of the men hired
to help work the ranches were Native American. Descendants of the
Lyons family are mostly found in the local Native American
community.
Redwood National Park acquired the Home Place lands with
acquisitions in 1978 and 1991. All the Bald Hills prairies located
in the park have been proposed as the Lyons Ranches Historic
District under the National Historic Preservation Act.