Cloverdale to celebrate nation’s birthday, and its own, on July 4th

For the first time in its history, Cloverdale will hold a Fourth of July parade, not only to mark the nation’s birthday but also to celebrate its own milestone.

“We didn’t have a lot of time to put together a big birthday celebration when we found out in late January that Cloverdale’s 150th anniversary of incorporation was in February,” said Neena Hanchett, Cloverdale Chamber of Commerce executive director. “So we thought we’ll combine ‘Happy Birthday, USA’ with ‘Happy Birthday, Cloverdale!’”

Staff from the chamber, the Cloverdale Historical Society and Citrus Fair worked together to plan Monday’s event.

A parade, which will begin at 9 a.m. on Third Street and end at Railroad Avenue, will include a color guard, a vintage fire truck, decorated bikes, groups like Little League and Nuestra Comunidad on flatbed trucks and kids dressed as Uncle Sam. The Lightning Athletics, a competitive troupe of cheerleaders, will also ride in the parade, among other entries, Hanchett said.

That will be followed by a Fourth of July Fair and a nod to the city’s past with old-fashioned fun activities from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Citrus Fairgrounds, as well as a professional fireworks show at dusk at the baseball field west of Cloverdale High School. The show is being sponsored by the Cloverdale Lions Club.

Hanchett suggested arriving downtown a little early, parking on side streets and bringing folding chairs.

“This will be a scaled-down version of the (annual) Citrus Fair parade,” she said. “We wanted to keep it simple so that anyone who wants to can participate.”

Activities at the fairgrounds will include pie-eating, hula hoop and water balloon-tossing contests, as well as horseshoe competitions. There will be live music by Blondediva in the morning and by Dry Creek Station in the afternoon, as well as carnival games. Various local businesses and the chamber are sponsoring the activities.

In the historic vein, a stagecoach, or mud wagon, that used to take travelers up to The Geysers — a big tourist draw — in the late 1800s will be on display at the fairgrounds.

The 150-year history of incorporated Cloverdale is filled with colorful figures and interesting events, Historical Society Executive Director Elissa Morrash said.

Morrash, who has been director for eight years, explained that “local history is more personal and different from U.S. history.”

“The other day a local family brought in a box that came across the prairie in 1860 with writings by a little girl,” she said.

Prior to the arrival of European settlers where Cloverdale now stands, the area was home to the Makahmo Pomo people for thousands of years. They are known for their exquisite basket making. A display of Pomo-made baskets is at the Cloverdale History Center, curated by Silver Galleto.

The first settlement of the land by non-natives began in the 1850s. A U.S. post office was built there in 1857. In 1858, the area served a stint as a trading post when pioneers Richard B. Markle and W.J. Miller acquired 757 acres. They erected a hotel and saloon and the town was known as Markleville for a short time.

But then founder James Abram Kleiser, a railroad man, engineer “and a kind of visionary” came on the scene, Morrash said. He purchased the property from Markle and Miller for $16,000 and laid out the town in 1859.

“And the very next thing they did was create a cemetery,” Morrash said. “The Riverside Cemetery is quite beautiful, and it made the town sort of self contained.”

Kleiser called Cloverdale “the prettiest place to build up a little town I have ever seen.”

The town of Cloverdale was incorporated when the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad arrived in 1872, with the Cloverdale stop at the end of the line. But to this day, there is no definitive telling of why the town was named that, she said. It was known as “Cloverdale, the Orange City” in 1898 when a lot of citrus grew in the region.

“What really put Cloverdale on the map was when the ... railroad made it the northern terminus,” Morrash said. All these agricultural products were sent south from Cloverdale. It was easy to ship from Cloverdale to points south and north. People took the ferry from San Francisco to Marin County and then took the train to Cloverdale.“

The city was the site of three different types of communities in the late 19th century:

• Preston, with a mansion, school and church built by healer and health aficionado Madam Emily Preston. People came from all over to be healed after they had tried every other type of cure.

• A Utopian community founded by Icarius Speranza, who left France when socialism failed, founding a communal living experiment on 885 acres from 1881 to 1886 in the future Cloverdale.

• Italian Swiss Agricultural Colony, also in 1881 in Asti, which was considered part of Cloverdale. It was founded by Andrei Sbarboro to provide jobs for Italians who had become unemployed after a downturn in the economy. He was later joined by Pietro Carlo Rossi to create the largest, most successful premium winery in the world.

By 1890, Cloverdale had a city hall, a library, a high school, a fire station, a post office, a chartered bank and a water company.

The generation of electricity from geothermal steam, the first ever in the U.S., started at The Geysers, east of Cloverdale, in the 1920s. Today, The Geysers is still one of the world's largest geothermal energy facilities.

More of the city’s history can be found at its museum, located in the Gothic Revival Victorian Gould-Shaw home at 315 Cloverdale Blvd. For $5, people can also take a walking tour of historical sites throughout the town.

The celebration of Cloverdale and its history has sparked a lot of interest among residents, Hanchett said.

“Based on the number of phone calls I’ve gotten, it’s going to be a great Fourth of July in Cloverdale,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Kathleen Coates at kathleen.coates@pressdemocrat.com or 707-521-5209.