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The beginning of the twentieth century brought a new era to Santa Rosa Island, when Walter Vail and J.V. Vickers (V & V) bought their first share of the
island from the estate of Alexander More in 1901. By 1903 they owned the majority of Santa Rosa’s acreage, which had been damaged by overgrazing.
V & V removed virtually all the sheep in order to rest the island’s grazing areas for several years, and then restocked the operation with cattle. In the late
1920s and early 1930s, Roosevelt elk from Washington and Kaibab mule deer from Arizona were introduced to the island, their population controlled by a
commercial hunting operation run for decades by V & V.
The V & V years are among the most colorful of the island’s history, an era coinciding with Southern California’s rapid growth, much of it due to other
V & V investments in the region. Walter Vail (1852-1906), born in Nova Scotia, and J.V. Vickers (1850-1912), who hailed from Pennsylvania, coincidentally
The schoolhouse at Santa Rosa
Island overlooks the south side of
Santa Cruz Island, with the mainland
in the distance to the far left