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| Ritter Ranch Project 
The over 100 year old winery barn on Ritter Ranch was demolished by the school district. Not one plank was saved. The Early Story of Ritter Ranch The wine industry can trace its beginnings all the way back to the 1890s, when a group of German Lutheran immigrants settled in Palmdale. The Ritter family bought 16 acres about nine miles west of Palmdale in what is now known as Leona Valley. They built their home and a barn and just as they had in Germany, they planted a vineyard, built a winery and made wine. John had realized that the soil and terrain in Leona Valley was similar to his homeland in Germany and he planted his large vineyard on the hillsides. The winery flourished and the Ritters sold their wine locally and shipped it to Europe. Even though they made a lot of wine, family members recall that, "Mother Ritter was always careful about too much wine." Ritter built a wine cellar into a hillside and lined it with stones - each at least a foot across. The stones were hauled from a nearby ditch by Ritter's sons. The entrance to the winery was made from bricks from Valyermo. There also was a dual wall of bricks with an air space between them. The timbers came from railroad ties in Acton. An anteroom in the main cellar housed small casks of wine for racking, a procedure of siphoning off the majority of wine to let the sediment settle to the bottom. There were huge redwood barrels with the word "Fermenting" on the side. This is where the juice created its sugar, alcohol and popular taste. John Ritter died in 1915 and Anna married Philip Hanf in 1927. Hanf liked to make wine and when Prohibition came, Philip and Anna continued to make wine. According to family members, the couple didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. In Germany, winemakers were held in the highest respect. Eventually, the winery ceased production. Some say the "Revenue Agents" caught them making wine and smashed the barrels. Other accounts relate that in 1929 the family dumped the wine because they were afraid of "Revenue Agents" discovering their winery. At any rate, it is said that the road, or Amargosa Creek, depending on which account you hear, ran red with wine for days. The Ritter Barn, photo by Marcy Watton
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