Theophile Verlaque (1823-1913), a French immigrant, became a successful San Diego entrepreneur, saloon keeper, vintner, and real estate speculator. He was a friend of Bernard Etcheverry, a French Basque immigrant who by 1880 owned 16,700 acres of the original Santa Maria Rancho land grant and operated a thriving rancho. Verlaque and Etcheverry concluded that a store and post office could succeed, and Verlaque's son Amos bought two acres from Etcheverry along the stage and freight wagon road between San Diego and Julian. Amos built a store and post office in 1883, and the town of Nuevo, later Ramon, began there. Verlaque then built a country home beside his son Amos' mercantile, modeled on homes from his youth in southern France and from his years near the French community of St. Genevieve, Missouri. The house, built in 1886, is a rare example of traditional French Provincial architecture in the western United States, with a 2 foot thick fieldstone foundation, 18 inch adobe walls, a 45 degree truncated hip roof, an elevated veranda surrounding the house, and a basement wine cellar with 7ft. ceilings and a ramp for wine barrels. Verlaque descendants owned the home continuously until 1962, when Leona Ransom bought it to have it restored and preserved as a museum. In 1984, the Ransom family donated the home to the Ramona Pioneer Historical Society, and it became the centerpiece of the Guy B. Woodward Museum.