Received a book titled Old Times in Contra Costa by Robert Daras Tatam, published in 1993 by Highland Publishers (and undoubtedly out of print). This book made me feel “historic.”
On page 7, “The Casa Adobe was ‘the’ place go go out for dinner or to hold a wedding receiption…[it] had been a home to several generations of the Pacheco family and other tenants before being remodeled to become a restaurant in 1946.”
My first “real” date was in 1968 when I took the most attractive woman from our high school to dinner at Casa Adobe, during our junior year at University of California, Berkeley.She’s living in Nevada City now, and I still think of her.
On page 133 there is the Mount Diablo Hospital Started in a Bungalow. "… Edna Hayword, a registered nurse in Concord…bought the gungalow and had it remodeled to become the new six-bed Concord Hospital. … In 1935 the two-story building in back was added, providing 10 more beads, a surgery room, emergency room, and offices. This building had the first elevator in Concord. In 1947 Mrs. Haywood sold the hospital to a doctor…
I was born at that hospital in 1947.
On page 135 there is Cowell Cement Plant Is Gone, But Smokestack Remains. “…The cement plant continued in business until 1947, when the workers went on strike and the management decided to close the plant rather than meet the employees’ terms. The old plant the the nearby village became an artists’s colony, with many craft shops and a wallpaper factory. The old Cowell hospital became a childcare center. There was a huge tree with a deluxe treehouse out in the back…”
I went to preschool at that childcare center. I remember being picked up at h
I grew up in Napa, CA not too far from your home territory. I took my first ride on a train with my mom and dad in 1962 when I was 6. We took the SP San Joaquin Daylight from Martinez to L.A. Union Station with Disneyland as our ultimate destination. We got back to the Bay Area via the Santa Fe Valley Flyer. Suffice it to say it was just about the best vacation a six year old could have.
It’s always a treat to read local history, especially if like yourself, you’ve spent the better part of your life there. Though I moved from Nevada City when I was 17, I always wax nostalgic when I can get hold of books about the Nevada City/Grass Valley area–and I still have a local connection with my mother still living there.
One of my memories was growing up in the house that Judge Lloyd Jennings and his wife Alice owned (I was their grand-nephew) that was right across the street from the terminal of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge railroad in Nevada City. I was born in 1939 and the railroad wasn’t taken out until about 1942, so as a child I would stand at the second-story window and watch the once a day train come in from Colfax. Evidently I got so excited I wet my diaper, according to mom.
I also found out that construction of the line between Grass Valley and Nevada City was delayed just a bit, so that the ‘last spike’ could be driven on July 4th, 1876. The town went wild with a huge parade, cannon was shot off on SugarLoaf Peak, and right during the ceremony, there was a freak thunderstorm. Seems the railroad came to town in a BIG way, LOL!
When I was 8yr old I used to walk to school over a footbridge located on Finkle St in Woodstock ON. That footbridge was were I saw the last few runs of some old 2-8-0’s used around there for switching etc. I’d stand there and watch them going right under me–pouring on the coals and watch the steam etc go up over the bridge—that bridge is still there and if you feel like spending the day watching CN mainline action there I’d be as well. My memories are full of the sounds of CN traffic as well as the purina mill/elevator as it was just around the corner from us—