The Miller Estate

German immigrant Henry Miller, born Heinrich Alfred Kreiser and later known as “The Cattle King,” arrived in San Francisco in 1850 with only $6 and set out to work hard in America using his knowledge of raising and butchering cattle. He chose ranching and, at the height of his career, controlled 14.5 million acres in California, Oregon, and Nevada, where he grazed a million head of cattle and more than a hundred thousand sheep. In addition to numerous businesses, ranch estates, and a mansion in San Francisco, he owned a summer estate on Mt. Madonna, where he began buying property in the 1870s. Logging had cleared much of the mountain’s dense forest and opened panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Clara Valley. During the family’s first summers there, they lived simply and entertained visitors in colorful furnished tents. In the 1890s, he began building three expansive bungalows and reshaped the grounds with terraced hillsides, lawns, flower gardens, an orchard, and a vineyard. After his death in 1916, the estate declined into disrepair, and in 1927 Santa Clara County began purchasing the property from his heirs for parkland, leaving only ruins of the estate.

California · United States