WILLIAMS, CA (MPG) – A Williams tradition that grew out of the longtime community event in the Old Gym may soon become part of the history it has helped preserve.
The future of the Williams Antique and Bottle Show is uncertain following this year’s event, with organizer Slim Edwards preparing to bring the matter before the Sacramento Valley Museum board, the show’s sponsor.
The event benefits the Sacramento Valley Museum, but Edwards said declining local attendance and the effort required to put it on are making it increasingly difficult to continue.
“This whole show is a fundraiser for the museum,” Edwards said. “So the next board meeting, we all got to get in the huddle.”
Despite efforts to attract visitors, Edwards said local traffic has slowed. At the same time, many longtime dealers and collectors who once filled bottle shows throughout Northern California are getting older.
“Those times are fading away,” Edwards said. “These guys are all aging out. We’ve got some in their 80s.”
Edwards recalled a time during the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s when bottle shows and shops could be found in communities throughout the region.
Williams’ event followed a broad antique exhibition and sale held for decades in the Old Gym. As participation and interest in that show declined, the show eventually ended, with the bottle show taking its place.
This year, economic pressures made travel more difficult for those coming from outside the area, resulting in some long-term participants dropping away. Another challenge for the show is the generational shift, with younger people showing little interest in acquiring antiques, either through purchase or by inheriting collections accumulated by their parents and grandparents.
Fourth generation Stonyford resident Gary Evans sold many of his family’s possessions over the weekend.
“My daughters didn’t want any of this stuff, even though if represents generations of our family,” he said.
But this year’s offerings provided a glimpse into why some collectors still make the trip. They included rare bottles from California’s Gold Rush era, some worth thousands of dollars.
Edwards also had an educational display of his own collection that connected visitors to Cook Springs, Bartlett Springs, Grizzly Springs and Allen Springs through mineral-water bottles and historic photographs showing the local resorts and how their products were transported. His interest in bottle collecting began as a boy after finding an old bottle near his grandparents’ Leesville cabin and discovering the dump where it came from.
Broadening the show beyond traditional antiques could offer another way to attract visitors. Christina Berger, invited by Edwards’ daughter, brought unusual jewelry she crafted with butterfly wings sourced from butterfly farms around the world, while her 11-year-old daughter, Alexis Herrick, sold crocheted pieces she began making earlier this year. Although neither fit the traditional antique-show mold, their work added something different to the mix.
“I would come back next year if there is a show,” Berger said.
Keeping the event going, however, will depend on enough people willing to set it up, tear it down and bring enough vendors and visitors through the doors to make the effort worthwhile, said Museum President Arno Martini.
No final decision has been made. Whether there will be a show next year will now be up to the Sacramento Valley Museum board, organizers said.