The Brookdale Nature Writer Who Helped Save Big Basin

The historic home of an early conservationist — now offered for sale in Brookdale.

By MaryBeth McLaughlin, The Mountain Ear Real Estate Columnist 

More than a hundred years ago, a writer named Virginia Garland Ballen lived in Brookdale among the redwoods. From her mountain home she wrote newspaper columns about wildflowers, birds, forest ponds, and the quiet life of the Santa Cruz Mountains. She led nature walks, taught craft and plant classes, and collected botanical specimens that were studied by scientists across the country. At a time when many people saw our redwood forest as something to cut down, she saw it as something to understand.

Virginia was not just a writer — she was a naturalist and scientific observer who studied plants, fungi, and wildlife in the mountains around Brookdale. She worked with Professor George F. Atkinson of Cornell University, collecting specimens and making detailed drawings that contributed to scientific research. From her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, she wrote articles and nature sketches for newspapers and magazines across California, describing the forests, the changing seasons, and the experience of living close to the land.

In one of her columns, she wrote about what she called “wild provender,” describing the mountains as a place where a person could learn to live from the land itself — gathering herbs, greens, and berries from the forest. In another piece describing a forest pond at night, she wrote about the scents of damp earth and trees, moths moving over the water, and the quiet stillness of the mountains after dark. And in a story titled “The Moonlit Hollow,” she described walking through the forest at night, where the redwoods and shadows made the mountains feel like a quiet, living world.

Virginia was also part of the early conservation movement that led to the preservation of Big Basin Redwoods in 1902, California’s first state park. She was associated with members of the Sempervirens Club and contributed to the growing public appreciation for the redwood forests through her writing. While others fought political battles to save the trees, Virginia helped people fall in love with them.

Her Brookdale home became known as “The Call of the Wild,” named after her nature writing series. But it was more than a home. It became a gathering place for writers, artists, and conservationists who came to the mountains for inspiration and conversation. She also ran a small nature and craft school, where students learned basketry, wood carving, pottery, bird study, and plant study, and spent days in the forest learning directly from the natural world.

Over the years, the property she once lived on continued to serve a similar purpose. It became a mountain retreat — a place people came to get away from the city, to rest, to write, to spend time in the redwoods, to breathe a little deeper and move a little slower. Different owners, different decades, but the same underlying draw.

Some places are more than houses. They become part of the story of a place. They hold what historians sometimes call a “sense of place” — shaped not just by the land itself, but by the people who lived there and how they lived.

Virginia once wrote about what she called the “mountain world,” a place where people came not just to visit, but to belong. More than a century later, that idea still resonates here in the San Lorenzo Valley. People still come for the same reasons — for the redwoods, the creeks, the quiet, and the feeling that life moves a little differently here.

The Brookdale home where she once lived still stands along Highway 9, surrounded by the same redwood trees, mountain air and babbling brook that inspired her writing more than a hundred years ago. It is now preparing to pass to its next steward — someone new who will become part of the long story of this place.

11931 Highway 9, Boulder Creek is listed for sale. Contact MaryBeth McLaughlin for details: santacruzmountainrealestate.com

View more of Virginia’s writings below.