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Up The Road: Get-er-done Museums

J. Stephen Conn
/
Flickr, Creative Commons
Museum Hours Sign

We’re still visiting museums, and considering how to fit them into anyone’s travel plans.

There are classic homes such as Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park and Stansbury House in Chico, with careful collections that introduce a time, and way of life we’d never know otherwise.

Telling a larger community story are wonderful little museums such as the Sacramento Valley Museum on E Street in Williams, the Siskiyou County Museum in Yreka—a best bet for finding out more about the original State of Jefferson movement—and Fort Crook in Fall River Mills, originally known as Camp Hollenbush, an outpost on the Shasta-Yreka Road built in 1857 by the U.S. Army’s Company A to provide protection for early settlers and travelers.

Keep an ear to the ground to keep up with newcomers, too.

Northern California is particularly rich in what I call, for lack of a better term, get-er-done museums—continuing testaments to the determination and innovative tendencies of people determined to build and otherwise make useful and/or beautiful things. This category started taking shape in my mind when I stopped into Trinity County’s barbed wire museum many years ago—still not sure where that collection is now; does someone out there know?—and solidified when I read somewhere than a nun invented barbed wire. Turns out that’s not true. But still ... good story. 

Northern California is particularly rich in what I call, for lack of a better term, get-er-done museums, which are continuing testaments to the determination and innovative tendencies of people determined to build and otherwise make useful and/or beautiful things.

Agriculture being a long-running way of life here in Northern California, ag museums are always worth the time effort. Patrick Ranch in Durham is an immense—28 acres—and immensely appealing work in progress, with multiple barns, a burgeoning collection of horse-drawn cultivators and harvesters, antique tractors and other farm machinery, blacksmithing studio, and, one of these days, a beekeeping museum. Coming to major events is a good way to appreciate the whole program. Next up is the October 8-9 annual Fiber Fusion Celebration of natural fibers and colors, put on by the Mt. Lassen Fiber Guild.

Head down to Woodland for a focused tour of antique farm machinery. The California Agriculture Museum includes the Heidrick Tractor Collection, with items such as a canny 1917 attachment that transformed everyday Model T trucks into tractors during World War I, when manufacturing efforts otherwise focused on war. Then there are the “Fordson” tractors, the closest Henry Ford could get to using his own name on his tractors because someone else owned the Ford Tractor Company. Appreciate the locally produced machinery too, such as the Yuba Ball Tread 15-25, made in Marysville.

But Bolt’s Antique Tool Museum in Oroville may be the region’s classic get-er-done stop, because the focus here is on the tools that get it done, and work crosses all boundaries. This is the largest collection of antique tools in the entire U.S., thanks to collector Bud Bolt (some 12,000 tools: Can you guess what that is?) so dig in for some good times, handy people. Where else can you go for special talks on Packard vehicles, Babbitt engine bearings, the history of the highway system, barbed wire, vintage tractor restoration, The collection itself is full of surprises, and what seem to be serious marketing mistakes. Who do you suppose named Snap-On Tools’ Anal-O-Scope? Geez. And if you’re short on time, forget the museum’s video tour. It’s more than two-and-a-half hours long. Considering the price of admission, come back another time—and bring your friends. Just get-er done.

Kim Weir is editor of Up the Road, a nonprofit public-interest journalism project dedicated to sustaining the Northern California story. A long-time member of the Society of American Travel Writers, Weir is also a former NSPR reporter.