Best of 2003: Best Place To See A Real Cowboy Bunkhouse

Guy B. Woodward Museum of Western Culture

1886 Verlaque House

645 Main Street, Ramona

760-789-7644

This a fascinating old French Provincial mansion filled with the history of San Diego cowboy -- not Spanish ranchero -- pioneering. What's special is they bought the entire turn-of-the-century Golden Eagle Ranch complex and rebuilt it here, plank by plank. So you've got a real cowboys' bunkhouse, plus other must-haves of ranch life: the beehouse, millinery shop, barn, post office, hobby shop, old-fashioned hairdresser, medicine wagon, tack room, blacksmith shop. Not to mention the water pump (where folks would go to fill the tub to bathe) in the kitchen. No faucets or bathrooms back then. Kenneth Woodward, son of Ramona's famous historian, manages the place.