The Fielding Garr Ranch operated from 1848 to 1981. Ranchers used the Island’s natural resources for construction, gathering rocks for walls and foundations. Because few trees grew on the Island, workers used precious wood to frame their structures and filled the frames with adobe bricks made from local clay, straw, and sand. From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, advances in transportation technologies such as railroads and later motorized vehicles made outsourced supplies cheaper and easier to obtain, so ranch residents used cinder blocks and corrugated tin in their later buildings.