The Ruth Bancroft Garden occupies land that was once part of a 400-acre fruit farm that produced walnuts and Bartlett pears in the Ygnacio Valley. The farm was started in the 1880s by Hubert Howe Bancroft, a famous historian and publisher who amassed a huge personal library of books related to the American West. Bancroft sold his important collection to the University of California, which became the nucleus of The Bancroft Library.