Page 440 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong

RD6, RD7, and RD8. As for the “new” Cat D4, everything on the tractor remained the same that year except for the radiator. In 1947, Cat upgraded its D4 with the new Cat D315 engine, rated at 48 horsepower. Both engine variations remained popular and, with regular updates, continued up to 1959. From 1936-1959, Caterpillar built a total of 94,496 RD4/D4 tractors. Today’s D4K series still retains the original design DNA of that first RD4.
A GLANCE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR
The threads of history between Peterson and the Dennis family have intertwined in such unusual ways through the years that the story bears retell- ing. In 1955, nearly twenty years after he’d bought that first RD4, Hazen Dennis Sr. decided to move out of the Bay Area. Developers were buying up all the land surrounding his property in Hayward, and he wanted out. He ended up buying three hundred acres in Middletown—a rural community in Lake County one hundred miles to the north—and went into partnership with his daughter, Marge, and son, Hazen Jr. The RD4 went with him. At the time, Hazen Jr. was just getting out of the military and was ready to settle down. He hired on as a ranch hand on the Diamond D Ranch in Mid- dletown, then owned by Ralph K. Davies (of Lou- ise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco).
There he met and married Margaret Delfino, who had moved from Alameda a few years earlier. The young couple moved into the little red ranch house down the lane from the Diamond D’s entrance and started building their family and life together.
Twenty-five years later, Howard Peterson bought the Diamond D from Davies’ widow—the same ranch Hazen Jr. had worked on as a ranch hand. The same ranch where his son, Dan Dennis, was born in 1961. And now the same ranch where Howard’s grandkids would spend countless hours exploring. It’s also where his grandson, Duane Doyle Sr., worked on long holiday weekends re- building the engine on the ranch’s old D5, and do- ing finals, steering clutches, and brakes on the old D7. Up to his elbows in grease and loving every minute.
By the time Dan Dennis turned twenty-three, he was living on the family property just south of town, working for a local contractor. “Howard Pe- terson donated a piece of his ranch along Hwy 29 to Middletown Bible Church,” recalls Dan years later. “My employer, Ed Breazeale, attended that church and donated his backhoe, and I donated my time digging the footings with it for the new building.” Dan also worked alongside Leroy Story, Howard’s right-hand man, when he was there on weekends.
Left to right: The Diamond D Ranch gate with some of Petersons 4th generation circa 1997; The Dennis family with their grandfather’s RD4 restored in 2009
438 | PETERSON: 85 YEARS AND GOING STRONG