Reading Adobe Site

The Reading Adobe Site, located along Adobe Lane east of Cottonwood in Shasta County, marks the homestead of Pierson B. Reading, a Mexican-era settler and grantee of the Rancho Buena Ventura in the northern Sacramento Valley. Reading received the rancho grant in 1844 from Mexican Governor Manuel Micheltorena and is generally credited as the first non-Indigenous resident to settle this far north in the Central Valley.

The adobe house built on the site followed the vernacular pattern of frontier California construction in the 1840s. Walls were laid up in sun-dried adobe brick on stone footings, with timber framing supporting a gabled roof originally covered with shakes or thatch. The plan was a simple rectangular block typical of rancho-era residences, with thick adobe walls providing thermal mass against the extremes of the upper Sacramento Valley climate. Interior finishes were plain, with whitewashed walls and packed-earth or plank floors.

Reading's holdings became a node in the early commerce of the region. He prospected for gold on Clear Creek and the Trinity River in 1848, becoming one of the first miners north of the Sutter operation, and his ranch served as a staging point for travelers and supply trains moving between the Sacramento Valley and the northern mines. The adobe house itself was the seat of an extensive cattle, sheep, and grain operation that persisted into the American period.

The original adobe deteriorated through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is now largely lost above grade, with foundations and archaeological remains marking the site. The Reading Adobe Site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 under reference number 71000194. The property is held in private ownership today.

Within California's adobe heritage, the Reading Adobe represents the northernmost extension of the Mexican rancho building tradition into the upper Sacramento Valley, and a tangible link to the transition from Mexican grant lands to American settlement that defined the region in the gold-rush era.