STONYFORD, CA (MPG) – Two small displays hastily assembled 15 years ago to prove an old building really was a museum remain inside the Stonyford Museum, modest reminders of how a tiny community turned its history into something meant to last.
The museum celebrated its 15th anniversary on Sept. 26 with an ice cream social featuring homemade desserts, while honoring the volunteers who transformed Stonyford’s historic Town Hall and those who have spent the years since filling it with the stories of the people who built, worked and lived in and around the western Colusa County community.
Founding volunteer Joyce Bond said what visitors see now began with a much bigger community undertaking.
In 1996, Stonyford residents decided they needed a larger community hall. The old Town Hall had served as a community gathering place for more than a century, but residents also had long wanted a place to preserve the area’s history.
Retired Colusa County Supervisor Gary Evans said building a new community hall made it possible to finally turn the old one into a museum.
“It took virtually everybody in town volunteering to make all this happen,” Evans said. “It was a community endeavor.”
The work was supported by a $240,000 Proposition 40 community grant obtained through the recreation district. The money originally was intended for four projects, including improvements to the community hall, restoration of the old Town Hall for a museum, improvements near the rodeo grounds and a fitness center. Rising restoration costs eventually forced the fitness project to be dropped.
Money alone did not rebuild Stonyford’s landmarks.
Evans said thousands of hours of donated labor went into the work. Local contractors and volunteers helped replace siding and the roof, add a porch and new front door, upgrade electrical systems and repair portions of the aging structure damaged by years of moisture.
Then came an unexpected problem.
Barbara Leach, now president of the Stonyford Community Hall, recalled meeting with a state representative who arrived to approve the completed grant projects. The renovated Town Hall had polished floors and was ready for use, but it was essentially empty.
The representative looked around and asked where the museum was.
Without museum exhibits, Leach was told, the state could not release grant funding for any of the projects.
She had three days.
Leach began calling residents who had historic photographs, artifacts and other pieces of Stonyford’s past. Joyce Bond was among those who helped gather material.
“We put together two little settings,” Leach said. “Just very simple things.”
Those early displays satisfied the requirement, and 15 years later, they remain part of a museum that has grown around them.
The collections now reach far beyond those first hurried exhibits, preserving Native American history, local schools, ranching and trapping, the Forest Service, railroads, geology, Fouts Springs, the Stonyford Rodeo, military and medical history, local cemeteries, reservoirs and dams and generations of family history.
The building itself is part of the story. Built in 1899, the property for the original Town Hall was purchased with a $1 gold coin from John McDaniel. The community was originally known as Smithville, founded along Stony Creek in 1863, before being moved, divided into streets and lots and renamed Stonyford in 1890.
Leach said the old hall spent roughly a century at the center of community life before beginning its second life preserving it.
“That small little building held countless dances, fundraisers and weddings,” she said, adding many of which are hold memories now represented in the museum’s collections.
The anniversary celebration also recognized the people who kept that second life going.
Bond thanked all who served through the years and the contractors and residents who helped restore the building. She recognized founding volunteers still lending a hand, including Caroline Stanton, Jeff Applegate, Maudrie Smith and Mary Quiberg. Founding volunteers fondly remembered were the late Roy Stewart, Jessie Westcamp, Lois Knight, Jacque Ray and Robert Gehrke. The museum has about 16 active volunteers today, Bond said.
Outside the museum, another piece of the community’s history is cemented in time. A Veterans Memorial built beside the old Town Hall in 2022 honors those who served. Bond said the museum is now seeking a grant to build another structure behind the museum for a blacksmith shop.