ISLA GUADALUPE THROUGH TIME
In the News~
April 19, 1873 [The Arizona Sentinel (Yuma)]: “The latest "big thing" is the enterprise of converting Guadalupe Island, lying off the coast of Lower California, into one Angora goat ranch. The island has an area of 165,400 acres and is the property of an incorporated company. It is mountainous, well-watered and at present tenanted by an immense flock of wild goats, embracing, it is estimated, 200,000 head, the descendants of some goats placed on the island by the Jesuit Fathers sixty or seventy years ago. Of late years some 32,000 have been killed for their skins and tallow. It is for the improvement of these goats —to make them fleece-bearing—that the Guadalupe Island Company has been organized. This is proposed to be done by a judicious crossing of fine Angora goat. The first installment of Angora bucks, fifty in number, has arrived at San Diego, and is perhaps already on the island. Four of these bucks are imported animals, valued at $250 each. The remainder are valued at $100 per head. the San Diego World gives the following particulars: The Guadalupe Island Company have purchased a flock of high grade fleece-bearing ewes, numbering 900, which, with their offspring—aggregating over 2,000 head—will be transported to the island in the fall of the year. A further shipment of fifty bucks will also be made. The bucks of the common goats will be slaughtered, and the same policy will be followed with the half breed bucks. It is thus expected that in the course of four or five years the flocks on Guadalupe Island will be so far improved that they will be all high grade fleece-bearing animals. Sac. Record.”
June 18, 1910 [The Leavenworth (Kansas) Post]: “Leaving a woman and child on Guadalupe Island, 150 miles off San Quintin, Lower California, A. Marcomson of Los Angeles and a companion, the latter the husband of the woman, arrived in San Quintin last Wednesday after passing six days in an open boat. This information was brought by steamer from Ensenada, Lower California, yesterday. The party of four was shipwrecked. The two men, in a small boat, started for San Quintin to obtain help. A relief party has set out for Guadalupe Island, which is uninhabited, save for the woman and child.”
