Switzerland to West Marin (Part 7 of 10)

Ticino has found prosperity since war

By David Rolland

Directly east of Point Reyes Station's Green Bridge is the ranch of Harold Genazzi, whose father Fred Genazzi immigrated from the Swiss village of Maggia in 1896.

A century later, Maggia is still tiny (750 residents compared with 675 in Point Reyes Station), and its lord mayor is Elio Genazzi, a cousin of Harold.

Mayor Genazzi has never set foot in West Marin, but in describing his own town on a recent Wednesday afternoon he might easily have been talking about Point Reyes Station.

Vacationers -- typically Dutch, German, and Italian -- boost Maggia's population to 1,000 in summer, crowding the town and making some villagers unfriendly toward outsiders.

As is true throughout West Marin, strict land-use regulations maintain Maggia's traditional appearance but often frustrate property owners. Real estate prices have become exorbitant.

The tourist-based prosperity is only a fairly recent phenomenon. Life, for many Ticinese, generally began improving as the villages modernized after World War II.

Genazzis epitomize change

The Genazzi family itself epitomizes the change. Mayor Genazzi, 42, a bespectacled, soft-spoken man, noted that around the turn of the century, when virtually all Maggia residents were poor, the Genazzis were especially destitute.

"They were considered the poorest family in Maggia," he offered matter of factly. "Even today in Valle Maggia, people talk about what a terrible time my family had to survive."

These days, aside from being the lord mayor, Elio Genazzi works as an urban planner for the City of Locarno and has just been elected to Ticino's canton (or state) parliament.

"Boy, things have changed," exclaimed Evelyn Gilardi nŽe Genazzi of Point Reyes Station, when she learned from The Light how well her cousin was faring.

The mayor, who is also a cousin of Tomales rancher Romeo "Butch" Cerini, recalled with a touch of pride what family members who stayed in Maggia managed to endure 100 years ago.

"At that time it was important to have some land," Genazzi said through an interpreter. "But the only land that they had was right up in the Alps -- in the mountains -- the farthest away from their house."

A dangerous life

Work then was hard and dangerous. Transporting hay down from the Alpine meadows was especially tricky. At the time, men and hay descended the mountainsides in gondola-like slings, which were ridden at high speed.

On one occasion, Elio's uncle Ubaldo Genazzi had not yet reached the end of the line when Mayor Genazzi's father Marco sent a bale of hay careening after him. The hay plowed into Ubaldo and knocked him off the crude sling. He fell some 50 feet and broke both legs.

These days, cable cars have replaced the slings, making the task far safer. The post-war era

If life has improved, the improvements by no means have come free of complications.

A decade ago, after 40 years of modernization and an influx of wealthy residents, civic leaders in Maggia grew concerned about some very West Marin-style issues.

New residents were building modern houses or remodeling old ones, and the resulting loss of historic character and scarce open space prompted a wave of land-use politics.

"If we allow everybody to build where they want, future generations will find themselves with no land, no green open space," said Mayor Genazzi. "Today that's one of the biggest problems we have here -- to plan what to do with the land."

Genazzi acknowledged, however, that some property owners feel paralyzed by new zoning laws and building codes. "Now it's almost to the point that it's practically suffocating people," he said.

"There are so many rules and laws they have to conform with that people say there's no liberty anymore. But it has been necessary to make these laws."

Genazzi, who has been mayor for eight years, is particularly pleased by a recent architectural trend celebrating traditional stone houses.

Homogeneity lost

Some changes city planners can't stop. Historically, villages in Ticino were defined by the families who lived in them. Cevio was the home of the Respinis and Dolcinis. Giumaglio was home to the Cerinis and Sartoris. In Someo were the Tomasinis and Righettis. The Codonis and Scilaccis came from Corippo.

The automobile, however, brought an end to the villages' isolation. Outsiders have moved in and the townspeople themselves have been freer to leave. Communities are far less homogenous than they were before World War II.

"Up to about 1960 in Maggia, the Genazzi, Martinelli, and Garzoli families were the majority," the mayor said, "but today, those families are just a few. The new arrivals have nothing [historically] to do with Maggia."

Unclaimed estates

Intriguingly, the changing character of Ticino's villages may hold financial significance for some West Marin residents.

As many older Ticinese have died, their property has fallen into legal limbo. Under Swiss law, all relatives of a deceased person must be asked if they want to put in a claim for his or her property.

Among those with outstanding claims to property in Maggia are the Swiss branches of the Campigli, Martinelli, and Genazzi families, the mayor noted.

"The relatives that are here can't dispose of an estate until they know all the heirs," he said. "It creates quite a problem, [for] we know there are heirs in America.

"But those heirs are afraid to admit who they are because they fear that maybe in the inheritance there are some debts, and maybe they'll have to pay."

Some heirs don't realize they may have a claim to valuable land in Maggia, he stressed.

Lived in both locales

Eva Giubbini of the village of Intragna has lived for years in both Ticino and West Marin, and has watched both regions evolve along somewhat similar lines.

Giubbini was born in Intragna but grew up in Inverness. She returned to Ticino with her family in 1948 when she was 19.

While living in Inverness, "my parents always said [Ticino] was the most beautiful country in the world," Giubbini said,

Inverness in the 1930s was no less rustic than Intragna at the time. When her family arrived, "Inverness still did not have electricity whereas Intragna already had electricity," she recalled. (Electrical service finally reached the Point Reyes peninsula in 1939.)

"My mother for one year cried every day...she was that homesick."

Likewise, Giubbini's father missed Intragna so much he made visits home every few years, returning one time having bought an old post office in Ticino. During his visits to Intragna, "he always said, 'I want to come back here. These are my roots. I want to come back.' And he did," Giubbini said, "but for only six months, and [then he] died of a heart attack."

New prosperity in Ticino

Upon returning to Switzerland as a young woman, she found Intragna "awful quiet, but I didn't care because I was coming here, and it was a whole new world."

Nearby, the city of Locarno has grown to 15,000 residents, but right after World War II, it looked "like a small, sleepy, Spanish town with little activity," Giubbini recalled.

"I don't know how the change came about, but everyone seemed to be happy," she said. "Everyone started working again. You started building. Banks went into business. Shops opened ... This happens after every war."

As has happened in her childhood home of Inverness, many old houses in Intragna and other Ticinese villages have been converted to vacation lodging.

Giubbini herself rents out a couple of houses to short-term and long-term vacationers. A two-bedroom house rents for the equivalent of $900 a month.

Giubbini waited 10 years after resettling in Intragna before visiting West Marin. She said she was too busy experiencing Europe: "I had too much to do...

"I love going back [to West Marin, but] I think I have gained more by staying in Europe. It has broadened me more than if I had remained in Inverness or Point Reyes."

However, Guibbini said, "I still feel very American."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 6 of 10)

A reporter's Swiss notebook

By David Rolland

Swiss officials charged photographer Janine Collins and me a whopping 70,000 Italian lira ($42) to drive our rented Ford Fiesta across the border from Italy, and once again we worried that our newsgathering adventure was far too expensive for The Light.

Our mission was to interview residents of Canton Ticino about their links to families in West Marin. The focus of our research was immigration that began 150 years ago and ended by the time most people alive today can remember.

One of the first Ticinese we looked up was Rita Alberti, owner of Hotel International in Bellinzona (comfy plus great Italian food), and her husband Toce. Toce Alberti's aunt and uncle lived in Greg and Doris Ferrandos' house in Point Reyes Station before the Ferrandos.

Longing for California

Intrigued by our research, the Albertis introduced us to Renaldo Richina, who with his wife Angelina had ranched in Monterey County for 14 years and could compare Ticino with California.

Richina showed us nearly every house in his town of Robasacco and described their inhabitants. At first, we were overwhelmed by this hospitality, but when we reached Richina's own home, we saw how much he still misses his cowboy days in California. Hanging in the entryway to his home is a Great Western Savings poster of John Wayne.

Angelina Richina poured us a glass of red wine, as did everybody else we met in Ticino, while her husband told us over and over how California is most wonderful place on earth but that President Clinton is "too soft."

With great humor, Richina served up rapidfire opinions on communism, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Kirk Douglas, Turkey, and former French President Francois Mitterand, revealing as he joked a keen understanding of what California has meant to him and other Ticinese.

After showing us photos of himself in cowboy garb, his prizewinning bulls (highest-grade butterfat 1958, 1959), and his children, Richina proudly declared: "I am an American. My children are American."

But what about Switzerland, his birthplace and home? "Too many son-of-a-guns," he shot back.

Our mission revealed

The Richinas and our hosts, the Albertis, took us to dinner at one of Robasacco's small restaurants where a boisterous crowd was drinking and singing at a nearby table. Curious what the revelers were singing in Italian, photographer Collins asked Toce Alberti to translate.

They're singing about the Ticinese migration to America, Alberti answered. Collins and I were dumbfounded: what could be more perfect for our research?

The group's songleader was introduced to us as a journalist, Pier Baroni, who writes for Lugano's Couriere del Ticino. Once Baroni learned why we were there, he shouted the news across the room to his cohorts, and they again burst into song.

It was a song for me, and it was followed with one for Collins -- her name worked cleverly into the lyrics.

Baroni was amazed that anyone in the States would know about the Ticinese emigration to California -- one of the most important events in his canton's history -- let alone would travel all the way to Robasacco to learn more about it.

It wasn't the only time Collins and I received such an emotional response to our reporting.

Rodonis in Ticino & West Marin

Exactly a week later, we arrived in the town of Biasca to have dinner with the Cavaglieri family. Before she married her husband Claude, Amina Cavaglieri's last name was Rodoni.

Cavaglieri showed as a picture of her grandfather, Ferdinando Rodoni, a cousin of immigrant Julius Rodoni. Julius was the father of Point Reyes Station residents Sis Arndt, Fred Rodoni Sr., Julius Rodoni, and Pat Rodoni, who died in March. Then she set the photo down next to a picture of a young Pat Rodoni, and the resemblance was unmistakable.

It was less than a decade ago that she learned she still had family alive in California. With her son Michel acting as translator, she told us how she the two halves of her family made contact:

Pat Rodoni, his wife Nola, and daughter Yvonne visited Biasca in 1984 in search of relatives. One of the town's longtime residents took them door to door to some of the many Rodoni households in Biasca, but the search was fruitless -- that is, until one Rodoni suggested that it might be the Cavaglieri family that they were looking for. Unfortunately, luck was not with Pat, Nola, and Yvonne; the Cavaglieris were out of town.

Pat and his family left their West Marin address and phone number with people in Biasca, and Amina ultimately got it. She called Pat and Nola in Point Reyes Station, and the relatives began exchanging old pictures of family members and the relationship developed.

A Swiss Rodoni visits Pt. Reyes

The two families didn't actually meet in person until another of Cavaglieri's sons, Carlo, visited Point Reyes Station and in broken English asked the first man he saw how he could find Pat Rodoni. The cheerful man replied, "I'm Pat Rodoni."

How did Carlo react? we asked him. "I don't have words," he replied. "It's impossible to explain -- excitement, emotion."

Some months later, Pat's daughter Yvonne and her husband Antonio Paez returned to Biasca for a visit, and Amina used the opportunity to bring out more photos of people she couldn't identify; they had been tucked away in an old family album.

As Yvonne eyed the photos, she saw the images of her father and her uncles that had been sent to Switzerland from California more than 50 years ago. "If we didn't have this documentation," Cavaglieri said, "we could not have found the family of Rodonis in America."

As Cavaglieri told her story and listened to Carlo tell his, she at times appeared on the verge of tears. She had been overcome with joy ever since we walked through her door. Our visit was worthy, in their opinion, of a huge bottle of champagne that Michel had won in the town's Carnivale. They said they had been saving it for a very special event.

The celebration didn't end with champagne. Two friends, the Maggini Sisters, suddenly burst into the house and serenaded us with America America, Happy Birthday to You, and a risqué ditty titled Don't Touch My Breasts -- all played on saxophone kazoos.

Two weeks of encounters like these made the $42 border crossing well worth the price.

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 5 of 10)

Canton of Ticino neighbors help each other in Tomales

By David Rolland

Sometimes not much changes when families move thousands of miles from home.

For more than a century, the Cerinis and the Sartoris have been neighbors in the Swiss town of Giumaglio. Today, a Cerini is the town mayor, and a Sartori Quarry sits just north of town.

As it happens, the Cerinis and Sartoris are also neighbors in Tomales.

They are an example of how the first immigrants from a certain town established themselves and then helped townspeople who arrived later not understanding a word of English.

One such helpful immigrant was Tomales rancher Maurice Sartori, who in 1910 gave 16-year-old newcomer Giocondo Cerini his first job as a ranchhand.

Two weeks before he died on Feb. 14 at age 100, Cerini told The Light that upon arriving, he saw so many familiar faces that Tomales "was just like home."

Stone cutter back home

Sartori had been a stone cutter in Giumaglio before emigrating to Tomales in the 1890s. He became a landowner in 1903 when he purchased the Burbank Ranch from his brother Victor, who had immigrated before him.

Sartori's ranch is still in the family. Romeo Sartori -- Maurice's grandson -- his wife Kathleen, and their adult son Russ own the 645-acre dairy on the Tomales-Petaluma Road now.

And Sartori's generosity paid off for the Cerinis. Giocondo saved enough money to later buy the John Keys ranch in Tomales along with two of his brothers, Arcangelo and Romeo.

That ranch, which is located across Highway 1 from the Tomales gas station, has since passed on to Romeo's son Butch.

Butch's cousins Roy, son of Isadore Cerini, and Leroy, son of Giocondo Cerini, also own land in Tomales.

Last living immigrant

Before he died, centenarian Giocondo Cerini was believed to be the last living immigrant who had made the journey from Switzerland to West Marin.

Ironically, his sister Maria Genazzi, who had stayed in Giumaglio with two of their brothers, died in Switzerland only a month earlier at the age of 104.

Her daughter Laura Bono -- talking to The Light between loads of laundry at her home in Maggia, Switzerland -- noted that Maria Genazzi was too attached to Ticino to emigrate to West Marin with the six of her brothers and sisters who did.

So while her brothers began the long road to greater freedom and prosperity by finding work at Tomales dairy ranches, Maria Cerini moved from Giumaglio to Maggia. There she married Giacinto Genazzi and struggled to raise five children.

"Life was very hard, especially for the Genazzi family," Bono said. "With five children, it was a difficult life because my father passed away very young. "It was difficult to get some money in the early times here. The brothers and sisters in California...they saved some money. But she -- here in Maggia -- she was very, very poor."

Murdered over livestock

Nor could she turn to her own parents for help. Her father Giovanni also died as a young man, having been murdered in a dispute over a goat.

Although her brothers in West Marin did far better, two sisters who had also immigrated weren't so fortunate. Adela and America Cerini died of consumption (tuberculosis) shortly after they arrived.

For his part, Giocondo Cerini had a tough time making it from Ticino to West Marin. After boarding the SS Britannia in France, he and a friend, Alex Piezzi, traveled in different classes of the ship en route to America. The two got separated when the ship docked at the federal immigration station on Ellis Island, New York, and they searched for each other for days.

As it turned out, American officials had wrongly registered young Cerini as an Italian, and Piezzi eventually found his friend at the Italian consulate.

Cerini told The Light that all he could afford to eat on the week-long train ride from New York to California was salami and cheese washed down with jug wine.

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 4 of 10)

Two very different families from the same Alpine village

By David Rolland

Chileno Valley rancher Hank Corda is proud of his family's long involvement in Marin civic affairs.

Marshall's Alvin Gambonini simply wants government officials to leave his family's ranch alone.

Both men descended from families who immigrated to West Marin from the same town, Vogorno, in Switzerland's Canton Ticino.

The Cordas have gone on to become prosperous ranchers, today owning more than 5,400 acres of ranch land in Chileno and Hicks valleys.

Cousins Hank and Jerry "Goog" Corda have both served recent terms as president of the Marin County Farm Bureau. And Hank, who is also a farm-insurance broker, serves as a director of the Resource Conservation District based in Point Reyes Station.

Hank Corda last week told The Light it was his great-uncle Fred who initially steered the family into politics and commerce.

Marin Dell Milk Co.

Fred Corda, the son of Swiss immigrant Joseph Corda, was a founding director of the Central Valley Bank, the Marin Property Owners Association, and -- in the early 1930s -- the old Marin Dell Milk Company.

Fred Corda by necessity was a man of vision. Marin Dell began distributing four years before the Golden Gate Bridge was finished in 1937, and the company had to use a barge to transport West Marin milk from Sausalito to San Francisco.

"Each of the ranchers would take their milk in cans to the central loading depot" on Novato Boulevard, Hank Corda said. The milk would then be trucked to Sausalito. Marin Dell eventually merged with Golden State, which was later bought out by Foremost.

"We've always been selectively active in farming organizations," Hank Corda said. He recalls with bemusement that some members of the public thought an Italian clique ran local affairs -- a perception based on the number of Italian-sounding Swiss names on Marin boards and commissions.

"People got the impression, 'Oh, they run things their own way,' and maybe to some degree that was true," Corda acknowledged.

Swiss Establishment

Until California's Brown Act was adopted in 1953, "Oftentimes [civic business] was done at a duck club or a deer hunt," Corda said. Oftentimes a county supervisor was invited to a "abalone feed or a salmon bake."

The Brown Act -- which requires that public business be conducted in public -- put an end to that, he maintained, adding that open-meeting laws have done more good than harm.

But in his grandfather's day, Corda said, "things got done in a little more timely fashion, and often there was some savings involved. [However,] it oftentimes meant some under-the-table shuffling."

Certainly, the Swiss-Italian clique isn't monolithic; Marshall rancher Alvin Gambonini, a distant relative by marriage of the Cordas, often takes a course that puts him at odds with government agencies or his ranching peers.

Alvin Gambonini

Gambonini seems ever to be warding off officials from Marin Municipal Water District (who own the neighboring Soulajoule Reservoir), plus the Regional Water Quality Control Board and Hank Corda's Resource Conservation District, (the latter two over cleanup of an old mercury mine on Gambonini's property).

As Gambonini sees it, he simply wants to raise cattle in the tradition of his grandfather, and he fashions himself a stubborn defender of his late father's ranch on the Marshall-Petaluma Road.

His grandfather, Battista Gambonini, like many immigrants endured a hard voyage when he set sail from Europe in 1868. The trip took a month and half, with the first leg ending at the Isthmus of Panama. There he traveled by flatcar across Panama, then hopped a second ship bound for San Francisco up the Pacific Coast. Once in California, Battista worked several months for various vegetable growers. Then he headed north to Humboldt County, another place Swiss immigrants were beginning to settle.

"In Humboldt County, unable to speak English, he packed his blankets on his back and walked from ranch to ranch, often hungry, looking for work," wrote Alvin's cousin Paul of Lake County in a history of the Gambonini family.

Worked for Martinelli

Several months and odd jobs later, Gambonini returned south and worked the next six years on Lawrence Martinelli's ranches in Hicks and Chileno valleys.

Battista Gambonini went on to rent various ranches, including the one in Tomales that the Sartoris later owned. He finally settled on a ranch in Sonoma County and raised six children, including Arnold, Alvin's father, who eventually bought the ranch that Alvin, 72, now owns.

Although the Gambonini ranch totals 1,460 acres, growing up on it was hardly luxurious. "About all we did was milk cows," Alvin Gambonini said. "We never went no place. Marshall was about the farthest we went."

In the 1920s and 1930s, the closest school was Salmon Creek School four miles away. Like most of his peers, Alvin got there on horseback. (He recalls one set of four brothers Ñ the Bonomis Ñ who arrived by horse and buggy.)

Poor Mrs. Silva

The impish Gambonini said he derived much pleasure from terrorizing Mrs. Silva, the school's teacher. He was the only first grader in a student body that never topped 12 at one time, Gambonini said, and so he was allowed him to go home before the other students. That's when boredom from a lack of companionship got him into trouble.

One time, he climbed on top of a shed outside the schoolhouse and tore all the shingles off the roof just to watch them blow around the yard.

On another occasion, he and a partner in crime, Paul Bordessa, who today lives on the Barboni ranch in Hicks Valley, violently rocked the school's outhouse back and forth, thinking a female classmate was inside.

To their surprise, a shaken Mrs. Silva stumbled out. "She grabbed us by our shirts and kept us inside [the school] all day," Gambonini recalled with a laugh.

Nearly killed her

Worse yet was the time Gambonini loosened the lugnuts on Mrs. Silva's 1929 Model A Ford, causing her to lose a wheel.

Oh, and one time he tossed some .22 shells into the school's wood-burning stove, and bullets exploded when they got hot.

Gambonini is no longer pestering Mrs. Silva, but he still can be exasperating when it comes to fixing erosion problems on his ranch. He frequently pits his will against the Resource Conservation District, whose directors include fellow descendants of Swiss immigrants Corda, Bill Barboni, and Don McIsaac (son of Nellie Codoni).

Gambonini always "was a real troublemaker," quipped his 12-year-old grandson Daniel last week, "and he still is."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 3 of 10)

How the Grossis and Spalettas prospered as immigrants

By David Rolland

Were he alive today, Domenico Grossi would probably say his best Christmas Day ever was his 17th, the day he arrived in Marin from Monte Carasso, Switzerland.

From a meager existence in the foothills of the Alps, Grossi would one day emerge as one of the most prosperous ranchers in West Marin history, acquiring a total of six ranches.

The only member of his immediate family to emigrate, Grossi became the patriarch of what could might be called the Grossi-Spaletta clan, which today operates 11 beef and dairy ranches in West Marin.

In contrast to West Marin's Grossis and Spalettas, who need computers to manage their hundreds of cattle, their cousin Diego Grossi, 52, in Switzerland milks 40 cows.

Interviewed at his home in Monte Carasso, Grossi told of working at an unpleasant railroad job for years before he was able to return to the vocation he loved -- tending dairy cows.

Working on the railroad

Ironically, another railroad job was responsible for Grossi's being in Switzerland today instead of West Marin.

Decades ago, Grossi's grandfather -- a poor farmer with a dim future -- was unexpectedly offered a job on a railroad, which in those days was a much sought-after job.

"He was out working in the vineyard and someone came and said, ÔLook, there's a chance of a job in the railways, are you interested?'" Diego's mother Edda recalled.

"My father said, 'Yes! Immediately!'"

Buoyed by his sudden good fortune, the grandfather stayed behind when his brother and sister departed for West Marin. The railroad provided steady work, but his family never enjoyed the prosperity of their relatives in the New World.

When he was just a boy of eight, grandson Diego began driving the family cattle each spring high into the Alps where they grazed throughout the summer.

Even today, Diego Grossi still takes his cows into the mountains, although now now they travel by cable car.

Grossi said he would like to milk more cows, but Ticino has too little pasture for its farms to graze much more than 50 head. "Switzerland is small, but it fits in your heart," he said with a smile.

'A life of poverty'

To be sure, Grossi is doing far better than his ancestors did. Recalling the old days, his mother Edda said, "It was a life of poverty...just a small house, a cow, some vineyards... a really poor life."

It was that austere existence that prompted her uncle Domenico Grossi to emigrate to Marin County, arriving in Sausalito on Christmas Day, 1891. There he said goodbye to his cousin, who had travelled with him but was continuing on to San Francisco.

"The day [Domenico] landed in Sausalito, he wanted to come out to ranching country," recalled his son Jim Grossi, 83, who still operates his father's original home ranch in Hicks Valley.

Domenico Grossi quickly learned that West Marin was where the jobs were. "He wanted to make money," said his son, "so they told him to go to Point Reyes and meet a guy named Grandi."

Grandi Mercantile Co.

In those days, Salvatore Grandi, another Italian-Swiss, owned the general store in Point Reyes Station.

Grandi gave Grossi a job delivering groceries to the ranches out on Point Reyes.

Through this, young Grossi became acquainted with the McClure ranching family, who in turn employed him as a ranchhand for seven years.

On the ranch, Domenico earned $25 a month. "He had to buy his own clothes. They did feed him," his son said, but not much. "It was a rough deal." He was eventually promoted to butter maker, which earned him an extra $5 a month.

By 1899, Grossi had accumulated the wherewithal to rent his own ranch in Olema where the Sacred Heart Church is today. Now a rancher in his own right, Grossi married and sired the first three of his 11 children.

Ironically, Grossi and his wife Teresa Buzzini had lived only a few miles apart as teenagers in Switzerland, but the two didn't meet until they both worked in Olema -- he at his ranch and she at Nelson's Hotel, now the Olema Inn.

Acquiring ranches

Two ranches and nearly two decades later, Grossi moved his family to their home ranch in Hicks Valley, where the work "damn near killed me," his son, Jim Grossi, remembered with a laugh.

"We would work like a bunch of beavers. The family took care of all the labor, milking 150 cows by hand twice a day including Sundays."

In the next 22 years, the elder Grossi would buy five more ranches and place one of his children on each.

George got the old Burdell Ranch near Stafford Lake; Henry received the old Tomasini Ranch in Marshall; Domingo got the M Ranch on Point Reyes; and Virginia (who married Tom Gallagher) and Alfred shared the Point's H Ranch.

The family later divided M ranch and daughter Mary and her husband David Rogers took the newly created half.

The Gallaghers in 1946 bought C Ranch from Joseph Nunes and Joseph Avila, and Alfred later purchased more land in Nicasio Valley.

The Spalettas

West Marin's Grossi and Spaletta families became intertwined when Domenico Grossi's eldest daughter Edith married Charles Spaletta. In 1936, her father gave them a ranch at the base of Red Hill on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. Today that ranch is run by their son Bud.

In 1955, Bud's brother Jim Spaletta, then 23, leased C Ranch from his uncle Tom Gallagher and later purchased another 1,450 acres north of Dillon Beach.

When Spaletta eventually moved to his Ranch to the north, he turned C Ranch over to his son Ernie. A second son, Jim Spaletta Jr., now runs yet another ranch in Tomales.

Together the Grossis and Spalettas now operate more than 9,000 acres in West Marin, including four ranches on Point Reyes that were purchased by the Park Service and leased back to the families.

Contact with Old Country

In the century since Charles Spaletta's father William immigrated from the village of Cimalmotto, Ticino, the Spalettas and Grossis have managed to stay in contact with their relatives in Switzerland.

Jim Spaletta Sr. and his wife Rosemary plan to make a third trip to Ticino next year to visit Grossi relatives in Monte Carasso. No Spalettas remain in Cimalmotto.

During an earlier visit to Ticino, the Spalettas wanted to see Brione, the town where grandmother Teresa Grossi nŽe Buzzini was born.

"Grandma always said it was the lousiest place in the world," Jim Spaletta Sr. noted. "My grandmother always said they didn't have enough to eat. If they had a varmint to eat, they'd eat that."

Despite his grandmother's bitter memories, the visitors found Brione and its surrounding Val Verzasca "just beautiful," Spaletta said, adding that it was hard to believe such a picturesque place could have seemed so bleak a hundred years ago.

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 2 of 10)

One emigration shaped two regions

By David Rolland

One day in late 1891, in Monte Carasso, Switzerland, 17-year-old Domenico Grossi planted a grape seedling and told his mother he was going to America.

He promised to return to Monte Carasso with some extra money for the family before the seedling bore fruit.

Today that seedling is part of a 2,000-square-meter vineyard, but Grossi's mother -- despite Domenico's promise -- never saw her son again.

Grossi was too busy becoming one of the most successful ranchers in West Marin history, in time acquiring six ranches from Point Reyes to Hicks Valley to Marshall, eventually doling them out to his children.

And although he never went home to Switzerland, Grossi made good on part of his promise. He sent a share of his West Marin earnings home, which improved life for his impoverished family.

"It might have been a small amount for those in America, [but for his family] here it was always a large amount," noted Grossi's cousin Edda Grossi, 81, who still lives in Monte Carasso.

"His parents didn't want him to go," she said. "But he had set his mind on [it], so he went. The others all stayed here."

20,000 immigrants to state

Grossi was typical of 20,000 Italian-speaking Swiss who between 1850 and 1930 fled oppressive poverty in the Canton of Ticino for California -- West Marin in particular, noted Giorgio Cheda of Locarno, a professor at the Locarno Teachers College who is an expert on Swiss emigration.

In fact, the only places in California to attract more Swiss immigrants than West Marin were the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Ticino, Switzerland's only canton (or state) south of the Alps, borders Northern Italy and mirrors its southern neighbor in language and culture. Not surprisingly, most of the Italian-sounding names found among today's West Marin residents -- Spaletta, Martinelli, Cheda, Campigli, Corda, Genazzi, Cerini, Dolcini, Respini, Gambonini, Lafranchi, etc. -- are actually Swiss.

Although the Ticinese arrived broke in West Marin, many of the immigrants worked hard and saved enough money to begin buying ranch land. Today these families own a combined 41,500 acres -- a staggering 30 percent of all the agricultural land in Marin County.

Swiss merchants

And the Swiss immigrants did not just prosper at ranching. EB Martinelli of Nicasio, whose father was one of the first to arrive in West Marin, was elected to the state Senate in 1908 and served two terms.

Another Martinelli, Attilio, after whom the centerpiece building in Inverness is named, served as county supervisor in the 1920s and 30s.

Ralph Grossi, grandson of Domenico Grossi, now represents West Marin agriculture in Washington DC, where he is president of the American Farmland Trust.

The late Nicasio rancher Henry Tomasini, another Swiss descendent, started the First National Bank in Tiburon and later Northbay Savings and Loan in Petaluma.

Four immigrant merchants -- Louis and Salvatore Grandi, Quinto Codoni, and Peter Scilacci -- started building Point Reyes Station's business district around 1880 and dominated it for four decades.

Giacominis & Chedas

Another Swiss immigrant, Celeste Domenighini, bore two sons who would also play prominent roles in town commerce: Toby Giacomini, the trucking company and feed barn owner, and his brother Waldo, a rancher who once owned the Palace Market. (Their father was Italian.)

Switzerland's Cheda family -- pronounced KAY-da in Ticino, CHEE-da here -- gave Point Reyes Station the late garage owner Dolph. His son Adolph (better known as Sonny), now owns Cheda's Chevrolet. Cousin Vernon Cheda formerly owned what is now Becker's deli.

Background to emigration

What prompted the migration? During the first half of the 19th century, tiny Ticino (twice the land area of Marin County) was devastated by political and economic upheavals both within Switzerland and in neighboring Italy.

Prior to Italian unification, Northern Italian nationalists often operated out of Switzerland in their war for independence from Austrian rule.

Austria responded by blockading the Italian-Swiss border, which cut off commerce between the two nations and left more than 6,000 Ticinese employed in Italy unable to support their families.

And there were usually many mouths to feed; birth control was rare and the additional children were viewed as potential workers who would help support the family. But the land was mostly rocky and unproductive, and by the mid-1800s was overburdened by a growing population, noted Professor Cheda.

Poverty in Ticino

To raise the animals necessary to sustain a single family with milk and food, villagers each spring perilously trekked with a couple of cows and goats to meadows in the high Alps, where the animals would graze all summer.

For many villagers, their work was wretched and their prospects bleak. Food was scarce. Infant mortality was high. Villagers lived at a level "just a bit above misery," said Edda Grossi of Monte Carasso.

"We never had any meat," said Locarno's Piero Lafranchi, 81, an uncle of Nicasio rancher Willie Lafranchi.

"Mostly what we ate was polenta," he explained through an interpreter. "Our staple diet was polenta: polenta and milk, milk and polenta, polenta and cheese, cheese and polenta."

Added his nephew Luciano, 65: "They had nothing to do here. They had no possibility for earning a bit of money. The only solution was to go to the States, so they went."

Finding work here

With little to lose, young Ticinese men set out for the United States where they hoped to cash in on the Californian Gold Rush. Soon, however, they turned to what they knew best -- cows.

What else, asked Luciano Lafranchi, "were they able to do? Nothing. Cows, cows, cows...Look after the cows. They had no profession."

Point Reyes Station rancher Harold Genazzi, the son of an immigrant, made the same point: "They had to scatter. There was nothin' doin' over there. They followed the dairy cow to the Northern Coast."

Referring to Ticino, Genazzi added, "My dad used to call it the land of misery."

A failed emigration

The Swiss emigration that began in 1849 was not Ticino's first. Boatloads of Ticinese had previously set off for an Australian gold rush but enjoyed no luck. A few found menial labor in Australia. Others found nothing at all. Most returned poorer than when they left.

For most who emigrated to California, however, the story had a happier ending. By 1851, noted Professor Cheda, word was getting around Ticino that California was truly a land of opportunity. Swiss newspapers reported on emigrant success stories.

Beginning that year, Swiss men from the Valle Maggia -- Ticino's Maggia River Valley -- first went to work at on the dairy ranches of West Marin. The names in this early group: Moretti, Garzoli, Pedrazzini, Righetti, DeMartini, and Tomasini.

The Martins and Dolcinis

Among the early immigrants was Carlo Martinoia from the village of Cevio. He changed his name to Charles Martin upon arriving in California and worked briefly in the gold fields. According to great-grandson Peter Dolcini of Hicks Valley, Martin lost his gold fever after a brother was stabbed to death, and he headed west to milk cows.

Martin followed the Swiss tradition of thrift and hard work. In 1856, just four years after reaching West Marin, Martin bought a large ranch in Chileno Valley. In 1870, before moving to San Diego to raise cattle, Martin had become the 26th richest landowner in Marin County, having amassed $36,000 worth of land. In comparison, Tomales founder John Keys' broad land holdings were worth $48,000, the 1870 census reported.

Martin's legacy -- the Dolcini estate -- survives today. Martin's daughter Anita married Pietro Dolcini, who with his brother Michael had emigrated from Cevio to Nicasio in 1880. The Dolcinis' father, Joseph, had previously taken part in the ill-fated emigration to Australia.

Today, the Dolcini estate owns more land in Marin County than any other private owner -- a total of 8,100 acres spread over nine ranches in Nicasio, Hicks, and Chileno valleys.

70 years of emigration

Martin and his contemporaries, however, were only the first wave of dairymen to leave the Valle Maggia for West Marin. In 1856, Austria dropped its blockade of Switzerland, and emigration slowed until 1868. That year, a series of floods around Lake Maggiore ruined crops and killed cattle, forcing another mass exodus.

By 1870, some 350 Ticinese were living on this coast. Settling particularly in Chileno and Hicks valleys and around Point Reyes Station and Olema were West Marin's first Chedas, Fioris (changed to Blooms), Martinellis, Scilaccis, Codonis, Campiglis, Giacominis, Genazzis, Grandis, Cerinis, Maggettis, and Respinis.

Those families were soon after joined by other Swiss with names like: Corda, Gambonini, Dado, Salmina, Barboni, Codiroli, and Pedranti. Still later, the immigration brought: Spalettas, Grossis, Giubbinis, Rodonis, Ambrosinis, Bianchis, Buzzinis, and Lafranchis.

For the most part poor, young (15 to 25 years old), and unable to speak English, the immigrants generally started as hands on existing dairies. In 1880, wages typically ran $10 to $15 per month plus food and lodging.

But while other Californians gradually abandoned the farm for urban industries, West Marin's Italian Swiss tended to keep plugging at what they knew best. "The migrants failed to conform to the California economic pattern of the time, but followed what seemed to be their own best chance for advancement," noted historian HF Raup's book Italian Swiss in California.

Whether to return to Ticino?

Until 1915, it was common for immigrants who amassed savings in West Marin to return to Ticino, although some found it difficult to readapt to Old World ways.

Moreover, those who stayed away unintentionally improved the lives of those who stayed behind. "The Golden State was the best opportunity for the people in Ticino," noted Professor Cheda. Not only did they send money home, they alleviated overpopulation in Ticino.

Even those who eventually returned helped the canton. Because so many young men were gone for years at a time, marriages were postponed, wives had fewer children, and the birthrate dipped.

Cheda said he believes this "natural birth control" was the most important demographic phenomenon of the Ticino-California migration: "The women, instead of having the first baby at 18 years, have it at 25 years -- almost 10 years later. And this way you cut almost 50 percent of the births. That's impressive, no?"

New standard of living

This falling birthrate and an influx of money from emigrants in America improved the general standard of living throughout Ticino, said Professor Cheda.

Families were better off financially. Parents were more mature when they had children and produced fewer of them, and so it was easier to feed and educate children.

Cheda has demographically studied areas in Ticino where there was significant emigration and places where fewer people left. "The most important thing, in my opinion, is the capacity of writing," he said. "It means in the places where the people migrated [out], the young [who remained] received instruction. They write and read."

However, the emigration also had a grim side. With so many men gone, the women had to take over the brutal work in Ticino.

In the late 1800s, the professor noted, Swiss doctors began finding that numerous girls were suffering serious bone deformities in the pelvic area caused by carrying heavy loads on their backs during their early teens.

As a result of the deformity, if such a woman became pregnant, in many cases "the women and child died [during birth]," Cheda said.

Creation of social classes

Migration also stratified the Valle Maggia into a system of social classes. Emigrants who returned from West Marin and elsewhere with money were afforded higher status.

Cheda's father Americo, for instance, was able to double the size of his house upon returning from California.

Indeed, in the Ticinese village of Someo, for example, the social distinctions carried to the grave. "In the early times, we had a poor cemetery for the people who stayed all their lives in Someo, and they stayed poor people," the professor explained.

"But the rich people...they come back from California, and they built these big, wonderful houses. [And] they built a new cemetery for only these people coming from California -- a private cemetery with big stone monuments."

No doubt the emigrants had earned all this. A writer for the 1927 History of Banking in California, which spotlighted some of the more prominent Swiss immigrants, was particularly impressed: "Among the people of foreign nations who have settled in this country, none have been more worthy of success than those from Switzerland...

"They possess to a marked degree the innate qualities that go to make a people great in the truest sense."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 1 of 10)

This series of articles is directly from the 'Switzerland to West Marin' articles published in the 'Point Reyes Light' weekley newspaper, for the city of Point Reyes (West Marin County, CA) and vicinity. We don't want this story to be lost, so we are republishing it here. It's highly significant to us, because it represents part of a history of Lombardian people in North America.

Ticino is the southernmost Canton in Switzerland, and the only one south of the Alps. It's root stock population is ethnically and culturally Lombardian. One of the most important events in Ticinese history is the migration to California, estimated at about 20,000 between 1850 and 1930.

California's traditional "Swiss" population had long been almost exclusively Ticinese. Their was once many "Swiss Clubs" in California, as they identified themselves as distinct from Italian-Americans. As "Lombardian-Americans," we consider them to be fully our kindred.

From the Point Reyes Light newpaper:

"Lavertezzo in the Valley Verzasca is typical of villages in Ticino. An Italian-speaking canton (or state) of Switzerland, Ticino lies on the southern side of the Alps. The Light sent reporter David Rolland and photographer Janine Collins to Switzerland and Croatia in April and May to research two of the five historic waves of ethnic immigration to West Marin. Others were from Ireland, Portugal's Azore Islands, and the Mexican state of Jalisco. Next week, The Light's three-part series will discuss the Genazzi, Campigli, Martinelli, Cheda, Dolcini, Lafranchi, and Barboni families. The final week will deal with Marshall's Viliciches and Konatiches and their relatives in war-torn Croatia."