City of Walnut Creek Completes Timber-Frame Barn Restoration and Living-History Blacksmith Forge Upgrade at Borges Ranch

Open space rangers with the City of Walnut Creek Arts + Rec Department and preservation carpenters from the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation completed a structural timber-frame restoration and living-history blacksmith shop upgrade on Saturday evening at Historic Borges Ranch at 1035 Castle Rock Road inside the 1,420-acre Shell Ridge Open Space. Established in 1899 by pioneer cattle rancher Francisco Borges and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hillside homestead preserves a rare working turn-of-the-century Central Contra Costa cattle ranch and serves as a major trailhead for Mount Diablo hikers and elementary school history field trips.

Over an eight-week autumn structural preservation phase, historic timberwrights jacked and leveled the 125-year-old main hay and livestock barn, sistered mortise-and-tenon Douglas fir posts with concealed steel seismic gusset plates, and reroofed the structure with fire-treated western red cedar shingles. Around the adjacent goat and heritage sheep corrals, crews graded 850 linear feet of stabilized decomposed granite pathways so visitors using wheelchairs and strollers can view the livestock pens and antique horse-drawn hay wagons on level ground.

Inside the 1904 Ranch Blacksmith Shop, docents commissioned a smokeless induction-assisted forge hood and electrostatic spark arrestor that allows blacksmiths to heat horseshoes and ranch hardware to 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit during high-fire-danger autumn days without burning bituminous coal. The zero-ember hearth eliminates smoke drift into the surrounding oak woodland while preserving traditional hammer-and-anvil forging techniques for visiting fourth-grade classes.

The $230,000 historic preservation project was funded through the City of Walnut Creek Open Space Capital Fund and a grant from the Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation. Visitors can check weekend blacksmith demonstration times and trail maps on the City of Walnut Creek Borges Ranch Portal.