A look at life in the heart of the Valley
When visitors head to Micke Grove Park, it’s easy to get distracted with the zoo, Frisbee golf course and Japanese-style garden. But tucked in a corner of the park is a treasure trove of local history, including a collection of restored tractors, a late 1800s working blacksmith shop, a historic schoolhouse and even three rooms recreated from a cottage built in the 1840s.
The San Joaquin County Historical Museum first opened in 1971 with one building and offered tours led by docents. The first donation was a photograph of a steam engine Holt tractor provided by the Wells Fargo Historical Museum in San Francisco. But the museum really started with the estate of William Micke, a renowned local grower after whom the park and zoo is named. Today, 10 employees and 90 volunteers (who work as docents, mechanics and groundskeepers) manage the space.
The museum grounds include eight exhibit buildings and four historic buildings on 18.5 acres. There are also a few rows of Tokay grapes planted by Micke himself.
“People need to take their time when they come here,” said Robin Wood, education and visitor services manager. “A half-hour to an hour is not going to be enough to see everything.”
The first building most visitors check out is the Erickson Exhibition Building that showcases one or two new exhibits each year. Right now, it features a special display celebrating the 50th anniversary of the museum’s official history. (The county signed an agreement with the museum in 1966, though official tours didn’t begin for another five years.)
Items are organized by the decades in which they were donated to the museum.
Julie Blood manages the collections and exhibits, including displays that recreate three rooms from the Charles Weber Cottage built in 1848, which is also located on the property.
“We have the parlor, the library and the blue bedroom, which turns out to have been Julia Weber’s bedroom,” she said. “I’ve gotten to know the family a little bit.”
Blood is most fascinated by the variety of what she finds in museum collections.
“Working with the collections is like Christmas. I never know what I might find in there,” she said. “There’s a whole section just for adornments, like hair combs, hats and pocket knives.”
The grounds are laid out like a working ranch: Plenty of space, farming implements and long low buildings holding all of the collections currently on display.
The Micke building contains grain and dairy farming implements, along with a collection of wagons, including a camp wagon that was used to take trips from the valley to Tahoe and Yosemite.
The Delta building is a collection of 3,000 foundry tools, including foot- and hand-powered wood working tools from the 1600s to the 1900s. The Tree and Vine room contains tools for winemaking and working in stone fruit orchards. It also holds William Micke’s aircooled Franklin car from the 1930s.
Outside, there is a restored railcar from the Pacific Fruit Exchange. It was among the first refrigerated train cars that allowed fresh produce to be shipped cross-country.
The McNeilly building holds small engines and the Rosen building houses larger engines, like restored John Deere, Holt and Caterpillar tractors. Even bigger earth moving equipment is displayed in the Brown Jones building. At one time, San Joaquin County was known as the “Earth Moving Capital of the World.”
The newest permanent installation is the Cortopassi Avansino building, which opened earlier this year. The displays inside illustrate the development of intensive, irrigated agriculture in San Joaquin County after about 1900. It focuses on six crops historically identified with the county: truck farming (small, diversified growing of vegetables and fruits), dry beans, asparagus, cherries, walnuts and canning tomatoes.
“Everyone tries to find their house on the giant map of San Joaquin County just inside the doors,” said Blood.
Each crop display includes touchscreens, audio and video of the crops being planted, tended, harvested and processed. A few feature videos with local growers, ranchers and farmers.
The museum also has a walking path called the Sunshine Trail. It was originally built as a sensory experience for visitors with sight impairments and has undergone recent renovations. The new trail is more focused on California history than local botany and includes more audio messages for visitors.
There is also a Delta Water path that loops around the Charles Weber Cottage, which is only open during the annual Festival of Trees on the first weekend of December. The other historical buildings are a schoolhouse built in 1866, the Julia Weber (daughter of Charles) house built in 1892 and a late 1800s working blacksmith shop used for school visits and special events.
Beyond exhibits and special events, part of the museum’s work is holding on to books, documents and a number of country records. These are mostly held in the Gerald D. Kennedy Reference Library and reading room. The library is open to the public by appointment and often used by researchers, lawyers and genealogists.
“It’s important for the public that we keep items like these available,” said Wood. “This is our history.”