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Get ready to have the time of your life. Finish the chores and bring
your tools. You’re going to build a historical site. Gather the livestock, the
canned goods, the crafts, your appetite and your dancing shoes. You’re
about to become part of the Alta Mesa Farm Bureau Hall.
Have you heard the one about…
…the Alta Mesa Hall that was built by local volunteer labor in 1913? Early
pioneer T. Winey donated the land and shared the financing of the building with
Charles Smith, Charles Partel and Mrs. Sara Green. It was built in a centralized
location of the sparsely settled community to accommodate church services and
community activities. It also served as a meeting place for a literary group,
the Don Ray Improvement Club that was founded in 1910. Until 1985, the
Hall remained one of the most important places associated with the history and
development of the rural Alta Mesa community.
I met many at the August, 1988 Herald Day festivities who fondly remembered
meeting their husbands and wives at the Hall during one of the myriad of social
events. I was treated to the hoopla at engagements and birthday parties, the
congratulations at showers and weddings, the tears at going away parties and
class reunions, and the fiddle that accompanied the calls at the square dances.
I saw busy careful hands at craft lessons.
In 1917, the Alta Mesa Farm Bureau bought the building. I heard the Farm
Bureau meetings come to order. Reports were read and speeches delivered. Animated discussions ensued over government regulations and propositions,
community planning and zoning, water conservation and district irrigation, road
layouts, new school planning and the fire department boundaries. The Alta
Mesa 4-H along with other local 4-H’s set meeting dates and held their social
affairs there.
I heard the order to add a kitchen to the rectangular building in 1930.
I saw local residents take time from their day’s labor to transform the building
to an “L” shape by 1935, the same year the wooden front porch was replaced with
a cement slab and a truncated hip roof was added over the porch.
I traveled back in time to two World Wars and a devastating flood. During the
First World War, local women met at the Alta Mesa Hall and rolled bandages for
wounded soldiers while the younger men- not on active duty-assembled for civil
defense training. During the second World War, the state militia drilled in the
Hall’s shadow. Inside the Hall work groups busied themselves in the
handcrafting of slippers and lap robes for wounded Second World War soldiers.
In the winter of 1955-56, Alta Mesa residents pitched in and made quilts for
the victims of Marysville-Yuba City flood. There were other memories, too. I was
treated to afternoons of roller skating across the large 50 by 30 foot floor.
Eyes twinkled as many remembered the Alta Mesa Fairs, one of the last rural
one-day community fairs in the state.
I know there are some of you out there who remember that day in 1922 when a
committee of local residents voted to hold the one-day fair in the summer. You
brought your produce, your handiwork and your canned goods and displayed them in
the Alta Mesa Hall. You prepared for the big day. Miss Marjorie McEnerney
practiced for the turkey race while Miss Alma Stout balanced bags of salt on top
of her head. Miss Amy Howell hoped to compete with the more practiced married
women in the rolling-pin throw. You voted for Miss Alta Mesa Queen. The big day
came. The flag was raised. The flowers and livestock were judged.
You had a tug of war with the Valley Oaks Grange members and you won.
Mrs. Will Hobday won the husband calling contest…”Turkey” Jim Carr won the
mule race when he beat Harve King with his dappled jackass and Jimmy Clarke with
his bob-tailed nag. At noon, you ate a chicken dinner – a dinner that was to
become a local tradition for the next 54 years. That dinner was cooked and
served by local women. For many years, almost every item of food was
donated, thereby raising enough revenue to assist in the Hall’s maintenance.
You presented your War Bonds and Stamps for admission to the evening dance
and strutted your stuff until well into the wee hours of the morning. Oh! How
word of a great time and good home cookin’ spread around the countryside!
Attendance at the Fair grew so much that the annual event had to be moved in
1976 to avoid the parking crunch.
So what happened to this place so abundant with memories? What happened to
the single story building built near the crest of a low hill, the lot gently
sloping away toward the north? The United States Department of the Interior,
National Park Service included the Alta Mesa Hall on the National Register of
Historic places. Victoria Sturmer wrote the nomination. In March of 1987, just
one year after it was declared a historical site, the Alta Mesa Hall burned to
ashes. The cause of the fire was believed to be deliberately set by young
vandals. The only structure left on the property is a restroom.
Do you know that when I pass the site on the corner of Blake and Alta Mesa
Roads I can still see the original paired main entrances under the wood shingled
roof?
…the simple open wooden platform that provided an entrance porch…its three
large double hung windows on the east and west sides that brought light and
ventilation into the large interior public assembly room…the raised stage at the
north end of this spacious room that was flanked by rooms that doubled for
dressing rooms and stage entrances. I can still see the plain unassuming
rear of the building with its small window in the center and an exit door with
its wooden steps at its eastern end.
Can you see it too? It’s not gone. What happened there still lives in the
memories of those who lived its history. It lives as testimony to an era when
life was perhaps simpler…less complicated.
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