Owners of Harkey House preserve original structure
The Harkey House has been a prominent structure on C Street in Yuba City since it was built in 1874 by former Sutter County Sheriff William Pinckney Harkey.
Harkey was an Illinois transplant who moved to the Yuba-sutter area with his wife, Clarinda, in 1854 and became successful running a pack of mules to deliver supplies to the foothills. He eventually purchased 200,000 acres of land in the Yuba-sutter area, a portion of which housed Harkey Ranch in Sutter County.
Harkey became the sheriff of Sutter County in 1873 and served in the role for 17 years.
attends Yuba City High School, were painting Patrick Star from “Spongebob Squarepants” with “Four years later” on his parking space.
“I think it was funny,” Dickson said. “...I think it’s a way we get to show our creativity.”
Xhymena De La Fuente was painting her parking space with several images that are important to her – such as a Volkswagen bus, which is her favorite car, on a road with palm trees, the ocean, the desert and more.
“It’s such a cool artistic outlet,” De La Fuente said. “It’s like we’re seniors and this is our last year and it’s like our home and it’s kind of like our space … it makes you feel more at home.”
Ryan Wallace, activities director at the school, said this is the first time they’ve had seniors paint their parking spaces in a long time because it’s technically also a community parking lot.
“The community really came together and the district OK’D it and they’re like ‘Hey, let’s have our seniors be able to do this’ because of the pandemic and they haven’t been able to have too much of a senior year in person so everyone came together and said ‘yes let’s make this happen,’” Wallace said.
He said the opportunity was free of charge for the students and the high school provided the paint supplies and set it up.
“We wanted to make sure it was as special as possible for them,” Wallace said. “This senior class didn’t have a prom last year … and they had over threequarters of their senior year that wasn’t in person and it’s just a little way of saying ‘Hey, we recognize what you went through and we want to give you this opportunity to come together and have a little bit of fun.’”