Forest Home Farms is a well-preserved historic district containing two high-style houses and a variety of outbuildings which exemplify agricultural developments in the San Ramon Valley.

The northern portion of the site contains seventeen buildings and structures dating from the 1850s to the 1940s, including two houses, thirteen outbuildings and two pergolas.

The southern portion of the property contains the David Glass House and its tank house which were relocated in 1998 from their original site at Lora-Nita Farm. The Glass House, built in 1877, is an example of Italianate residential architecture popular in the area during the 1870s.

The original 1850 farm was comprised of 710 acres which stretched from the current site across the San Ramon Valley to the Diablo foothills. Additional acreage was added over the years. Most of the site was eventually sold with housing, schools, a utility right-of-way and churches constructed on the land. A major freeway was constructed parallel to San Ramon Valley Boulevard. A branch railroad once bisected the larger farm. It was abandoned and the tracks were removed.

By the 1974, the farm had been reduced to its present size.

Source: Adapted from the NRHP nomination submitted in 2002.

Forest Home Farms Historic Park is open to the public.

Buildings that Moved

It's not just that the people of the American West are restless, the buildings themselves sometimes pack up and move when - for one reason or another - the neighborhood no longer suits them or the neighbors no longer want them or opportunity waits down the road.

And when buildings remain in place, they are often searching for their identities.

Of the buildings and structures we have visited, the original Reno Arch holds the record for number of moves. It has been moved five times since it was built in 1926.

Jax Truckee Diner holds the distance title. The building moved from New Jersry to Pennsylvanis in 1948, then from Pennsylvania to Califonia in 1992.

Probably the most ambitious relocation occurred on July 4th 1904, when the Southern Pacific Railroad loaded most of the town of Wadsworth, Nevada, onto rail cars and transported the town thirty miles west to create a new town which became known as Sparks.