Kern County Museum restores 1875 Weller Ranch House on way to completing 60 buildings | News

Peeling paint bothers Mike McCoy.

So does rotting wood, collapsing ceilings and leaky roofs.

But the executive director of the Kern County Museum believes within another year or so that every historic building in the museum’s Pioneer Village will have been painted, repaired or restored — and made ready for decades more use at the Chester Avenue museum.

“The thing is, if you really care about something, then you’re passionate about it,” McCoy said.

And there’s no doubt McCoy is passionate about the more than eight-decade-old museum and its historical treasures.

So are many local donors and nonprofit foundations McCoy credits for contributing the considerable financial support it takes to keep the buildings ship shape, now and for future generations.

“All four buildings on this intersection did not have any paint on them three months ago,” McCoy said, as he looked around at the nearby structures.

But the one he’s really proud of is the 1875-era Weller Ranch House, which originally sprung up in the Rosedale Ranch area in the late 19th century.

“I had yellow tape around it,” he said of the Weller house.

The insides had rotted out, the ceilings had come down, and the porch was unsafe.

“If you walked in, it made you want to start crying,” he said. “This is one of the oldest structures in Kern County.”

In the decades after the end of the Civil War, an unstable economy created economic and social turmoil in the United States, the museum found in researching the history of the house.

Many of those looking for opportunity were heading West.

The Kern County Land Co. founded the Rosedale Colony in 1890. After building the Calloway Canal, which carried much needed water to the area, the company actively recruited settlers from the eastern United States and Europe.

In 1898, William and Irena Weller migrated from Michigan to Kern County with their children, Amos and Alma, settling in the rural farming community of Rosedale.

William and Irena lived in this board and batten style house originally located on the farm west of Bakersfield.

In 1899, Amos Weller purchased a store dealing in general merchandise from WR Sheppard for $1. By 1910, William worked as a clerk in his son’s store while Irena tended to their home.

Raymond F. Stockton and Marjorie M. Stockton, William and Irena Weller’s granddaughter, donated the house to the Kern County Museum in 1957.

“I got a call from a local foundation,” McCoy recalled. “They said, ‘Do you have any buildings you need to restore?’

McCoy estimated the cost of restoring the 147-year-old structure at $15,000. It turned out the cost of the project came in at $15,000, exactly what the Harriet Ethel West Foundation provided.

Soon, McCoy hopes visitors will be able to walk through the four-room home, which features furnishings and other artifacts from the Weller and Stockton families.

Longtime local businesswoman Sheryl Barbich, chair of the Kern County Museum Foundation Board of Trustees, which administers the museum, said the museum has made great progress in recent years.

“One of the reasons that this property has really turned around is sitting at the end of the table,” Barbich said, referring to McCoy.

The foundation is a nonprofit that works under an operating agreement with the county of Kern.

“When this foundation took over the operation of the museum in July 2011, almost everything was falling down,” Barbich said.

McCoy asked the community to step up, and it did, she said.

“At this point … we think this is a really strong, stable and well-maintained (museum),” Barbich said. “Our biggest challenge is getting people out here to see it — and not only walk through one time, but come back again and again.”

There’s so much to see and do, she said.

Michael Stevenson, a certified public accountant who volunteers his time and expertise as a treasurer of the board, said he’s seen encouraging changes over the past few years.

“I think, over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a transition from just maintenance of artifacts and preservation to trying to tell the story of Kern County,” he said. “And I think we will see in the next couple of years, more and more telling the story and less and less maintaining things so they don’t rot and decay.”

Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.

Comments are closed.