Sonoma County Archives moving out of wildfires’ path

With peak fire season approaching and after two close calls with catastrophic infernos, Sonoma County Library officials are scrambling to move truckloads of priceless documents out of harm’s way.

The relocation of what Supervisor Susan Gorin called a “treasure trove” of irreplaceable records currently stored in a timeworn Sonoma Valley building started last week and is scheduled for completion by the end of the month.

“We’re trying to get it done as quickly as possible,” said Ann Hammond, the county library director. “Rescuing these materials from the path of fire has been a priority for the library, and I’m happy to see this milestone in process.”

The archives, a relatively obscure county resource with a devoted following among people who study and appreciate history, have been housed in a nondescript and unnumbered building amid the vast Los Guilicos county government complex off Highway 12 in east Santa Rosa.

The 3,800-square-foot structure built in the 1950s, with a concrete floor and leaky metal roof, barely escaped harm from the Nuns fire that came within 440 feet in 2017 and a harrowing repeat by the Glass fire that edged even closer in September, causing $8 million in damage at the Los Guilicos site, which includes the county’s Juvenile Justice Center.

Dead, fire-blackened trees dot the Mayacamas Mountains slopes behind the complex.

The warehouse, once part of the kitchen from the Los Guilicos school for delinquent girls, has held more than 40,000 historic photographs, records of deeds and mortgages, voter registrations, business licenses, adoption records from 1927 to 1945, four boxes of hospital records from the 1930s and ‘40s, and much more.

“That looks biblical,” said Vidal Serna, co-owner of Schultz Bros. Van & Storage, pointing to a row of large volumes with tattered brown covers and labeled “Assessment Roll 1862-63.”

“You gotta be really careful with these ones,” one of his crew members said.

Serna, whose firm was hired to transport the carefully packaged items, said he intends to meet the library’s Aug. 31 deadline. “We’re working on it,” he said. “We’ll get it.”

The company is hauling its precious cargo in 26-foot box trucks to temporary storage space in a leased Sonoma County Farm Bureau building on Westwind Boulevard near the county airport.

Hammond said the temporary location assures the archives’ safety, while the library, a separate, tax-supported public agency, and county supervisors determine a permanent space for some 5,000 cubic feet of records.

The supervisors put up $140,000 to lease the Farm Bureau site for two years, which can be extended, Hammond said, and the Library Commission paid $137,000 for an inventory of the records, packaging and moving them and reconfiguring the new space.

“It is a big relief,” she said.

Gorin, whose district includes the archives, and Deborah Doyle, the library commission chair, both said in April the relocation was time-sensitive.

“Urgency is the word I would use,” Gorin said.

Leaders of a citizens group pushing for relocation of the archives said they were “thrilled by the news” of the move.

The temporary facility is “a huge first step toward preserving one of Sonoma County’s most unique and valued archival collections,” Katherine Rinehart and Lynn Downey, co-chairs of Advocates for the Sonoma County Archives, said in an email.

Asserting that “more people than ever” now know the importance of preserving the records, they said a permanent archives facility “must be part of the county’s plan for a new administration center.”

Rhinehart is a retired county library official and Downey is a western historian and consulting archivist who has worked in the county archives.

The old records — valued by researchers, historians, genealogists and attorneys — will be inaccessible for about eight weeks while they are moved and then shelved at the temporary facility.

When that’s done, the public will once again be able to request archival materials and view them by appointment at the History & Genealogy Library in downtown Santa Rosa, adjacent to the Central Santa Rosa Library at Third and E streets.

The archives themselves are closed to the public.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.