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HARRY CAREY RANCH
(Clougherty Ranch)
HABS No. CA-2712 (Page 9)
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play called Montana (while recovering from pneumonia contracted after a boating
) accident). Carey's love for the dramatic arts solidified as he starred in the production of
this play during its three-year tour in the early 1900s. Eager to recreate the financial
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success of Montana, he wrote another play that quickly failed and the actor was soon out
of work. Carey's transition to screen acting came in about 1908 when he started working
for the Biograph studio and its pioneering director, D. W. Griffith, at the Ft. Lee studios
in New Jersey. His first work, Bill Sharkey's Last Game, was a nickelodeon film
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released in 1909.

Carey heard that new companies were heading west and he followed the fledgling film
studios that came to the Pacific Coast in the early 1900s, arriving in California in about
1912. It was not long before he was introduced to the Santa Clarita Valley, where Tom
Mix ·and Carey performed in Light of the Western Stars, shot on location in 1913. Carey
married Olive Fuller Golden, also a native of New York and a film actress,. in_ 1916 and
the newlyweds soon established a home on the property in San Francisquito Canyon that
is the subject of this report. Harry Carey Jr., was born in Saugus on May 16, 1921, in the
Carey's first wood frame house on the ranch. The couple also had a daughter, Ella
Taylor (nee Carey), nicknamed "Cappy," who was born atthe ranch two years later.
Harry Carey Jr. states that his parents homesteaded the ranch property, taking over the
claim from a previous settler in 1916, which is consistent with federal land records that
show that Carey patented the land in 1925. The birth of their son four years earlier, in the
ranch house located on the property, shows that Harry and Olive Carey had established
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residence on the land by at least that time, probably in 1916, after they were married.

In the early years of his marriage, Harry Carey often worked in the Santa Clarita Valley
where he made several of the many single reel W estems that comprise his silent film
work. Olive Carey introduced her husband to director John Ford and as noted above, the
two made the first of twenty-six films together, Straight Shooting, in 1917 . 18 Ford and
Carey's collaboration resulted in the creation of the character "Cheyenne Harry," a role
that Carey would play in at least two serials, but his working relationship with Ford
ended in a misunderstanding that kept them apart for more than 20 years. Carey went on
to work with many other directors and even wrote and directed some films himself.
-During Carey's most prolific period, the 1910s through 1930s, he, his wife, and his
family lived on the ranch most of the time, but frequently traveled to New York to rent

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Carey, Company of Heroes, 44-53; Hoffinan, "A" Western Filmmakers, 278-281; "Friends Bid Farewell to Harry
Carey ... ," The Signal (September 25, 1947), I; John Boston, "Stars Turned out for Carey Funeral in 1947," The
Signal (September 28, 1997).
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Harry Carey, Jr., interview, January 26, 2001; Carey, Company of Heroes, 44-53; Hoffman, "A" Western
Filmmakers, 278-281; "Friends Bid Farewell to Harry Carey ... ," The Signal (September 25, 1947), l; John Boston,
"Stars Turned out for Carey Funeral in 194 7 /' The Signal (September 28, 1997); Bureau of Land Management, Land
Patent Records, CALA 0031850, Patent issued July 16, 1925 to Henry Dewitt Carey, and CALA 0032149, Patent
issued April 22, 1926 to Henry Dewitt Carey.
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This film is rumored to have been shot on the land that would become the Carey ranch, but no documentation of
this has been found to date. Leonard Maltin, "John Ford," Leonard Ma/tin's Movie Encyclopedia (Penguin Putnam:
1994), as quoted on us.imdb.com. Carey, Company of Heroes, 44-53_; Hoffman, ''A" Western Filmmakers, 278-281;
"Friends Bid Farewell to Harry Carey ... ," The Signal (September 25, 1947), I.