Cholame (; Salinan: ''Tco'alam'') is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

San Luis Obispo County, California San Luis Obispo County (), officially the County of San Luis Obispo, is a County (United States), county on the Central Coast of California. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 282,424. The county seat is San Luis Obispo ...

, United States. It sits within a mile of the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, right-lateral strike-slip transform fault that extends roughly through the U.S. state of California. It forms part of the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Paci ...

at an elevation of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

. Cholame is reached via State Route 41, just southwest of the junction of Route 46. Rainfall data from a nearby ranch shows that the area around Cholame only receives about eight to nine inches (200–230 mm) of rain in a normal year.

History

Cholame was originally a rancheria of the Salinian Indians. 200px, Jack Ranch Cafe, left Rancho Cholame was an 1844 Mexican land grant. In 1867,

William Welles Hollister William Welles Hollister (1818–1886) was a native of Ohio who came west in the 1850s and became a wealthy rancher and entrepreneur in California. Biography Ancestors and early life William Welles Hollister, was born on Jan. 12, 1818 near Han ...

(1818–1886) purchased Rancho Cholame. Hollister sold a half-interest in the rancho to Robert Edgar Jack in 1869.Dan Krieger, "Ranch Near Where James Dean Died in Crash Has a Long History," ''San Luis Obispo Tribune,'' May 17, 2015, page B3] Jack studied at Maine Wesleyan Seminary, and he later was an accountant at a shipping house in New York City. In the Civil War he enlisted in the 56th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and he served in

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Harrisburg ( ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,099 as of 2020, Harrisburg is the ninth-most populous city in Pennsylvania. It is the larger of the two pr ...

, during the

Battle of Gettysburg The Battle of Gettysburg () was a three-day battle in the American Civil War, which was fought between the Union and Confederate armies between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle, won by the Union, ...

and then in New York to quell "anti-Negro riots" there. Near the end of the war, he moved to California and became Hollister's accountant and secretary on the latter's San Justo Ranch surrounding the present city of Hollister. When that property was subdivided, the two bought the Cholame land. Jack married Hollister's daughter, Lucy Ellen (Nellie) in 1870 and became the largest wool grower in

Central California Central California is generally thought of as the middle third of the U.S. state of California, north of Southern California (which includes Los Angeles and San Diego) and south of Northern California (which includes San Francisco and San Jose, ...

, later switching to cattle and agriculture. Jack organized the County Bank of San Luis Obispo. The land was sold to the Hearst Corporation in 1966 and is still a working cattle ranch.David W. Kean, 1993, ''Wide Places in the California Roads: The encyclopedia of California's small towns and the roads that lead to them'' (Volume 1 of 4: Southern California Counties), pp. 44–45.

James Dean

On September 30, 1955, actor

James Dean James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931September 30, 1955) was an American actor. He became one of the most influential figures in Hollywood in the 1950s, despite a career that lasted only five years. His impact on cinema and popular culture was p ...

died in a car crash when Cal Poly student Donald Turnupseed made a left turn without seeing Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder approaching at the junction of State Highways 41 and 46. Dean was the driver of the car that slammed into the car driven by Turnupseed. His passenger, named Rolf Wutherich, was thrown from the vehicle but survived. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. On the same date in 2005, the State of California observed the 50th anniversary of Dean's death by naming the intersection as the James Dean Memorial Junction. A few hundred people, including state officials, a Dean family member, several Dean archivists and fans gathered at the junction and in Cholame to pay tribute to the actor. A memorial to Dean was erected in 1977 near the Jack Ranch Cafe (then Stella's Country Kitchen) by a retired Japanese businessman from

Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...

, Seita Ohnishi, costing $13,000 at the time. The monument is made of stainless steel and surrounds a

tree of heaven ''Ailanthus altissima'' ( ), commonly known as tree of heaven or ailanthus tree, is a deciduous tree in the quassia family. It is native to northeast and central China, and Taiwan. Unlike other members of the genus ''Ailanthus'', it is found ...

. In particular, Ohnishi was fond of Dean's movie '' East of Eden'', inspiring him to fund the memorial, which was designed in such a way to reflect both the beautiful and unfinished nature of the actor's life.

Gallery

File:JamesDeanTributePostcard1988GF38.jpg, The James Dean Memorial in central California File:Cholame Hills.JPG, Cholame Hills

References

{{authority control James Dean Unincorporated communities in San Luis Obispo County, California Unincorporated communities in California