Vallejo Estate (Lachryma Montis)

General Mariano Vallejo's estate sits a short walk northwest of the plaza — the home he built after the Mexican period ended and his vast rancho empire began to dissolve. The Gothic Revival house (1852) is handsome and well-furnished, with a separate Swiss Chalet building on the grounds that served as a storehouse for Vallejo's wine.

The estate is part of Sonoma State Historic Park and entry is by the same pass as the Mission and Barracks. The grounds include the spring that gives the estate its Spanish name and the remnants of what was once a significant Sonoma wine operation. Vallejo was a genuine polymath — soldier, legislator, historian, viticulturalist — and the interpretive displays here do a fair job of capturing a complex life lived through extraordinary historical change.

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A story
Mariano Vallejo named his estate "Lachryma Montis" — Tear of the Mountain — after the spring that fed the property. He built a comfortable Gothic Revival house here in 1852 after losing most of his rancho lands to squatters and legal challenges following California's entry into the union. Despite having welcomed American annexation, Vallejo spent the rest of his life fighting in courts to hold onto what remained of a once-enormous land grant.