ON MEMORY'S BACK TRAIL John and Mary Dye; Pioneers
By Darrell Beck

John Sidney Dye

Mary Ann (Warnock) Dye was 7 years old in 1857 when she came to California with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Warnock.

The family landed in San Francisco, where they boarded a side-wheeler and came to San Diego.

Soon after, William Warnock followed his brother, Sam, into the backcountry, where he settled east of present-day Ramona in an area known as Santa Teresa.

William built an adobe house, began farming and raising stock. It was here that Mary Warnock eventually met and married John Sidney Dye, who freighted goods between San Diego and Julian over a route leading past the Warnock ranch.

John and Mary Dye soon homesteaded land east of the original Warnock ranch near a place now called Dye Canyon, overlooking the Cuyamaca Mountains and south of the settlement of Ballena. The couple built an adobe house, began a family, took up agriculture and lived by the ways of the land.

Thirteen children were born into the home of John and Mary Dye, nine of whom lived to adulthood. All of the children were born in the ranch house without the assistance of a doctor, as the nearest doctor was 60 miles away. Only a neighbor woman, who traveled about 15 miles, would come to assist.

Mary Anne Warnock Dye Photos courtesy of Darrell Beck

In her later years, Mary recalled the earthquake of 1865 that cracked the house but opened a spring nearby.

The family survived the bitter cold of a snowstorm in 1881. When their axe was buried in the drifts and they were unable to chop firewood, family members dug fence rails from the snow for fireplace fuel. However, due to the severe cold, diphtheria broke out and a son and daughter died, but Mary used homemade throat remedies to save the other children.

The nearest trading place was Colton, many miles to the north. It took John Dye several weeks, driving a four-horse rig, to make the trip for supplies. The family kept chickens, hogs and cows. They put down their own meat, rendered lard, made soap and candles. Mary was a good hand in the fields, helping bring in the crops and pitch hay right alongside the men. It was a time when black bears, lions and rattlesnakes were plentiful in the region, but that didn't stop her from living happily there for 77 years.

Today, the Dye homestead is abandoned. It is marked by a patch of green, indicating the location of the spring and a large, dead sycamore that once shaded the house. The adobe has melted back into the earth from whence it came, roof timbers burned or hauled off by scavengers. Only a few stressed mulberry trees, some rock parapets, pottery shards and purple glass remain to remind a curious passerby that this was once the home of a hardy pioneer family.

The many descendants of John and Mary Dye are scattered far and wide, most perhaps unaware of their forebearers' way of life on the frontier and whose presence there typified the self-reliant and adventurous spirit of the pioneers. Nevertheless, their name has been preserved in a few places like Dye Mountain, Dye Valley and Dye Road.