So, it was a nice drive up here. I had my buddy Tim for company, and we chitter-chatted all the way up Highway 99. Thank heavens, because the landscape was nothing to look at it. With the exception of the Sutter Buttes in the distance, there's really not much to see. Unlike my drive through the lush farm lands between Fresno and Salinas, the orchards along the route between Sacramento and Chico seem somewhat lifeless and boring. And the towns along the way are grim spaces where traffic backs up and the overall impression is one of hard economic times. Just lifeless, in spite of the life all around.
My Chico Home
But enough of that. We arrived in Chico with enough time for me to check into my hotel before we headed over to the Bidwell Mansion, kick-off site for the conference. First about my hotel. Charming, spacious room, big bed, good-size bathtub (always important with me), and, best of all, a 24-hour little store on the first floor with a fridge well-stocked with--wait for it--liquor! Several kinds of bottled beer, including Stella Artois, and lots and lots of different wines. How cool is that?
John and Annie Bidwell's Chico Home
Now the Bidwell Mansion. Lovely Italiante architecture, built in the late 1860s, with a visitor's center next door with a tiny museum and a conference room where all the conferences attendees met. The Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) chapter up here is very active, with two wonderful faculty advisors who are very active and engaged. The students served some veggies, chips, brownies, and such, and we heard some opening remarks. Then it was off to tour the mansion.
Check out star-spangled curtains!
The tour guide was a C-SUC (yeah, I love it) graduate who now works at the Mansion. Some things became clear from the very beginning--he loves trees and he loves John and Annie Bidwell. The house itself is beautifully restored, with some pieces original to the Bidwells and many period pieces as well. With three stories and many, many bedrooms, it's quite clear that the Bidwells were quite the partyers. Among their guests over the years was President Rutherford B. Hayes, General William T. Sherman, Susan B. Anthony, and John Muir. John and Annie were quite active in both the prohibition movement (where is a Frances E. Willard Avenue right next to the Mansion) and in the women's suffrage movement. In fact, the coolest thing in the whole house was a four-volume set of books in the library on the history of the women's suffrage movement--all with personal notes to the Bidwells from Susan B. herself.
With a tour group full of history students,
Mansion staff is lucky these were under
lock and key
Another wicked cool feature of the house is a chair that sits beside the life-size oil painting of John Bidwell in the foyer. The chair, rescued during a remodeling of the United States Senate chamber, was the seat belonging to Daniel Webster. John Bidwell acquired it, and it was his most prized possession.
Excuse me, Daniel Webster, may
I have a seat?
A word about the huge painting of the master of the house--Bidwell's eyes follow you around the foyer, like something from a creepy (or perhaps a Mel Brooks) movie. The house itself was filled with lots of photographs of the Bidwells, but the best picture in the place was that of William T. Sherman in Bidwell's office. Who wouldn't want a photo of Sherman over their desk? Well, maybe not Scarlett O'Hara....
There's a lot more I want to know about John and Annie Bidwell, but the gift shop had only a couple of non-scholarly works about them. I'm not interested in fluff; I want to know the down-and-dirty. So I'll try to remember that I'm not a California historian while I'm here--at least not until exams are over.
Tim's wife, Steph, and the kids came up from Sacramento, and we went for Mexican food for dinner. Delicious margarita, by the way. It's late now, and I'm snug in my room. Oh, and to impressive my readers, my room is next door to the Presidential Suite. I may have to tell Barack and Michelle to keep it down tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment