Jack London sought to establish a model farm on land he loved and wanted preserved for future generations. Famous for writing and adventuring rather than farming when he arrived, he developed a love for the land he named Beauty Ranch, bought his first parcel in 1905, and expanded the ranch to more than 1400 acres by 1913. Unlike many of his neighbors, he studied earlier farming practices and became passionately interested in creating an agricultural masterpiece. Charmian London said he cared even more about introducing better farming to Sonoma County and the wider country than about leaving literary masterpieces. London wrote that when he bought 129 acres near Glen Ellen nine years earlier, he knew nothing about farming and had bought the place to live and write in, but he went on to rebuild worn-out hillside lands ruined by wasteful pioneer farming through green manures, nitrogen-gathering crops, animal manures, rotation of crops, proper tillage, and drainage rather than commercial fertilizer. After Jack London's death, his step-sister and ranch superintendent, Eliza London Shepard, worked with Charmian for many years to maintain Beauty Ranch, and remnants of the ranch are preserved in Jack London State Historic Park.