Located in Mendocino County's beautiful but isolated Round Valley, Covelo is a town of just over 1,000 people where unemployment is high and education levels below average.
But the town and valley also are home to strong, determined, civic-minded people who have just completed a remarkable feat made more so by an adverse economy.
The Friends of the Round Valley Public Library has just completed a $1 million reconstruction project and this week will open the doors to a new library. The library occupies about half of a 3,850-square-foot building that also will include a community center expected to be completed by summer.
"It's a lesson in bringing a community together," said Diann Simmons, vice president of the library organization.
"I'm really proud of what Covelo's doing," said Mendocino County Supervisor John Pinches, who represents the area.
Simmons secured several grants and large donations from people who have ties to the community, most of whom wish to remain anonymous.
One of the larger grants also stems from a Covelo family connection. The Thomas J. Long Foundation gave $250,000 to the effort.
"Our founder, Thomas J. Long, was born and raised in Covelo. It's a chance for us to give back to that community for raising such a wonderful man," said Bob Coakley, executive director of the foundation.
Long was born to a pioneering family in Covelo in 1910. The son of a local merchant, he went on to found the Longs Drug Stores chain with his brother Joseph.
The new library is across the street from the Long family's former mercantile store, now a charter school.
The library and community center building was first a hardware store and later became a restaurant and bar, Simmons said. It's built of concrete but sheathed in old-growth redwood, she said.
"It's a fabulous building," said Ed TePas, past president of the Friends of the Round Valley Public Library.
It replaces a 1,920-square-foot library in a small shopping center that residents organized in 1978 and ran until 1990 when Mendocino County brought it into its system, TePas said.
Volunteers formed the Friends of the Round Valley Public Library at that time. The organization paid for rent, utilities, janitors and supplies and the county paid for a full-time librarian. The rest of the library staff are volunteers and the library's books are donated.
Sales from a pictorial history book of the Round Valley published by Floyd Barney and Elmer Bauer in 1997 provided seed money for the new library. It generated $100,000 by 2007, when the project formally was launched, TePas said.
The library organization owns the new building - purchased for about $300,000 - and will continue to support the library.
The group's accomplishment is laudatory, said Assistant County Librarian John Bishop.
"I think it's a remarkable achievement, especially for such a small community," he said.
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