Barker Ranch began when Bluch and Helen Thomason moved to the area in the late 1930s to try gold mining and, around 1940, built a small stone cabin and outbuilding with electricity from a windmill and generator and drinking water from a nearby spring. In 1955, Jim and Arlene Barker bought the ranch after moving to the desert from Oklahoma, enlarged the house, and added more outbuildings to accommodate family gatherings. The ranch became infamous in 1969 when Charles Manson and members of the Manson Family were captured there after local law enforcement focused on them as suspects in the burning of road maintenance equipment, and detectives later found that those vandalism suspects were also responsible for a series of murders in the Los Angeles area. Barker Ranch became part of Death Valley National Park in 1994, and the main house and workshop were destroyed in an accidental fire in May 2009. Barker Ranch has been determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.