The Press Democrat from Santa Rosa, California • 35

The PRESS DEMOCRAT SMU low, Sub, April 17, 1949 other early blossoms that dot the green pastures and the grain fields surrounding the pioneer little town bear out the floral version. The old Le Febvre hotel first built in 1856 as the first hotel in the Bloomfield area, and one of the earliest in all of Southern Sonoma county is still standing in the town. One of the principal -buildings on the country Toad "Main Street," it is about the same as it was rebuilt in 1897 after a fire destroyed much of the original structure. OLIVES M. Le FEVBRE launched the hotel business.

His nostelry was famed for its meals, the quality of the beverages he dispensed with a lavish hand and for the general hospitality of the host. Now operated by Alfred and Bertha Hedin, who have owned the building for several years, the old Le Febvre hotel is the locale for another of Russell Smith's stories of the town one of the memories that make Bloomfield an interesting place to visit. It deals with a rather severe practical joke, epitome perhaps of rural barroom humor, that the recipient failed to consider a joke for some months after it was over. It deals with one Jim Dunbar, an old time Bloomfield resident, known for his flowing beard and nis extension-soled shoes. "You know the kind," Russell Smith (incidentally he's I )' J.

5 vs ''s s-s PASTORAL scene such as from Bloomfield's Masonic this just across "Main Streer Temple are familiar in the area. The contented cows are herd. part of Peter Moro's dairy Many have poultry houses and barns for cows and other domestic animals. One store today serves the need of the communit whereas in the memory of many of the "old timers" there were once several. Obe Cockrill, Santa Rosa and Jenner, a grandson of the original L.

D. Cockrill, who became the community's first justice of the peace, recalled the other day "when there ware three stores and four saloons, a barber shop and a lot of activity" in the town. Potatoes were once "Big Business" in he area. "And we can still raise the finest spuds in the United States," boasts Russell Smith, member of one of the earliest farm families to settle in the area. "We raise potatoes here without irrigation," he continued.

"They never turn dark after they're cooked. They are firm, pure white." At one time thousands of acres of the fertile land of the valley was devoted to potato growing. "I've seen four horse teams loaded high with potatoes traveling the road between here and Petaluma by the dozens," he said. "They'd travel through mud almost axle deep taking all day for the trio to get the spuds to the boat landing at Petaluma for shipment to San Francisco." POTATO ACREAGE has dropped to a comparatively small planting now. "Probably not more than 300 acres planted, all told," he says.

Kirkland Brothers have one of the "last I "Russ" to his hundreds ol dose friends throughout all of Sonoma county) "they had a sole extending out maybe a half inch or more from the side of the shoe?" "Well, Jim was living in the Le Febrvre hotel when it burned back in the nineties. He had a narrow squeak came almost getting caught in his room. And be was deathly afraid of fire ever since. "The boys all knew that. And one day he was sound asleep in a chair, tilted back against the wall in the barroom.

Several of the 'boys' were aroud and someone got an idea they'd liven things up a little. He nailed Jim's extension soles to the floor, set fire to a newspaper and hollered "Jim rared up out of his chair, and fell flat on his face onto the burning newspaper. "Burned his beard off and scorched his shirt. "Gosh, he was mad he threatened to beat up on the whole bunch but nobody told who had done it." Later, after the effects of the "scare" had worn off, even the victim saw the humor of the situation, Mr. Smith says.

"But it took quite a while." NEXT DOOR to the old hotel just across a side street, is the home of Vitruvius Lodge of Masons, one of the pioneer lodges of the order in the county, and locale last January 16 of an Open House party that marked end of one of, the most recent of Bloomfield's many neighborly cooperative projects. Masons, who had spent several months remodelling their own meeting hall with their own donated labor in the interests of modernizing their meeting place were hosts at an afternoon long party that drew attendance from all parts of Sonoma county and from as far away as the San Francisco bay area. The lodge was instituted in 1860 under dispensation and was chartered on May 16, 1861. Charter members were T. G.

Cockrill, Dickens, J. M. Hin-man, S. Honigsberger, Isaac Kuffel, D. Markel, J.

R. Ross and J. W. Zuber. Mr.

Hinman was the first worshipful master. Mr. Markel the senior warden; Mr. Kuffel, the junior warden and Mr. Cockrill, the first secretary.

First meeting place was in the old school building first school to be established in Big Valley. Later, in 1876 membership had grown, the town was in its hey day, and the members subscribed a fund for a building of their own. A brick structure was erected, with a store on the lower floor. This stood until on April 18, the earthquake that levelled Santa Rosa and San Francisco, shattered the old building into a pile of brick. "There wasn't anything left but a rubble and the foundation" says Russ Smith.

Undeterred, the Masons got (Continued on Face 11, Col. 1) Donna Cazeres and acquiring her grant of the two square leagues of the picturesquely named "Rancho Canada de Po-bolome." The name so the historical account gives it is a contraction of "Blumefield," which was at one time in its early development or at least the area was, if the town wasn't ailed "Blumedale." This, history says, came about when Dr. Blume was instrumental in organization of an early day sawmill company, financed largely by Benecia capital, known as the "Blumedale Company." It operated on a part of his grant, but nearer the town of Freestone. However, Mr. Smith has in his collection of "Bloomfieldiana" several of the original old transcripts of deeds dating back to the days of the division of the original grant before the town of Bloomfield came into being through the civic mindedness of the Hoags and Isaac Kuffel.

"ONE OF THOSE old deeds," he recalled," mentions 'that part of my ranch known as "That was right where the town of Bloomfield now stands," he says. "They called it that from the flowers that bloom in the fields in the spring. Later, when the town was laid out, it was called 'Bloomfield' for the same reason." His version is far more the picturesque of the two and in the spring this spring in particular the abundance of wild-flowers, the yellow mustard, lavendar and white wild radish, the dainty "baby blue eyes" and newly remodelled Masonic beyond the gasoline sign, the 1867" Odd Fellows' hall. stands," he says a planting of about 200 acres annually. Heavier producing fields on irrigated land in the Sacramento Valley, areas that have a longer production season, have caused big inroads on the Bloomfield plantings.

Mr. Smith's grandfather, W. A. Smith, who settled on the "old home ranch" where Sid V. Smith, brother of Russell, and one of Sonoma county's best known farmers, a leader in the Sonoma-Marin Counties Agricultural Conservation Association, now lives, and Patrick Car-roll known for years as "Squire" Carroll launched the potato business, and the dairy activity, too, in the Bloomfield section in the 'fifties.

The Smith family has had a leading role in agricultural development of the area since W. A. Smith first settled there. His son, Commodore Perry Smith, widely known in all of Sonoma county up to the time of his death a few years ago, farmed the land of the old homestead until his sons, Russell, Sid and Wayne how in Napa county and former assistant Sonoma County school superintendent, succeeded him in agricultural operations. RUSSELL SMITH has many memories and stories of "old days" in Bloomfield.

He has a version of the naming of the town that differs from and is more picturesque than the version printed in historical accounts. The history books say that Bloomfield got its name from Dr. F. G. Blume, once a Sonoma merchant, who moved to Freestone in 1848 after marrying to it is the Temple, and old "built in -1 s.

I --MP I ft ss "r- Friendly People At Bloomfield (Continued From Page 12) the sloping hill beyond, the steep roofs and "gingerbread" frescoes of jig sawed wood dating them to the stirring days in the community's early history when it was one of the biggest towns in Sonoma county. The town was laid out in 1856 as a pretentious affair with several streets running north and south and several more running east and west. This development, though came after William Zellhardt built the first house in the present townsite in 1853 to be followed later that same year by I D. Cockrill, an ardent "Southern Democrat," whose political leanings once led to one of the stirring "frontier" tales of Bloomfield's early days that are still told by descendants of the old families when "Judge CockrilF narrowly escaped being lynched by equally -ardent Republicans. Soon after the Zellhardt and the Cockrill homesteads were established, Mr.

Zellhardt put up a blacksmith shop to serve the ranchers who had earlier settled in the Big Valley. EARLY IN 1874 Horace a newcomer in the area, saw possibilities of commercial development, and opened a store, in a part of the L. D. Cockrill house. Later he built a store building, and in 1856 was appointed as the town's first postmaster.

Two families, the Hoags and Kuffels, laid out the town the same year the postoff ice was established C. and J. Hoag family members still live in Santa Rosa owned the western half of the townsite and Isaac Kuffel, the eastern portion. Trom its inception the town flourished, in spite of the fact, as an early historical account puts it, that "it was an inland trading point with no direct communication with San Francisco for a number of years." "Stores, hotels, blacksmith shops, churches, schools were established," the old account continues. "Residences occupied the various streets." But instead of the homes crowding the blocks laid out by the town's developers, majority of them, from indications today, appear -to have been almost "small farms" the smallest in the area, incidentally, for any one of two dozen or more farms that make up the approximately 30 square miles known as "The Bloomfield Country," could hold the entire townsite without its presence hampering their daily operation.

TOWN LOTS today, in many Sites, axe still "small farms." i i 1 1 ft. .0 I f-jl I I til SJB MAIN STREET' in Bloomfield is county road from SebastopoL Building in the foreground is the old Le Febvre Hotel. Next o-.