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IT’S YOUR PAPER www.claytonpioneer.com
February 20, 2009
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Arts Celebration will honor the past Creekside Arts celebrates sixth year with an ever-growing weekend event ANDRÉ GENSBURGER Clayton Pioneer
JULIE PIERCE
MAYOR’S CORNER
Honoring the Hoyers as Clayton turns 45 March 18 will mark the 45th anniversary of Clayton’s incorporation as a city. Thanks to the vision of a small group of Clayton residents who led the effort and to the wise voters of our then very small community, we are a distinct and independent city. We invite you to join us before our March 17 City Council meeting, when the city will name the Library Meeting Room “Hoyer Hall” in honor of Robert and Eldora Hoyer – who helped organize the incorporation effort and who have continued to contribute so much to our community. Bob was our first mayor and Eldora has helped to document much of our civic history. Together, they have helped to shape the city we call home. You can read more about Clayton’s history and incorporation on the city’s Website, www.ci.clayton.ca.us, and at the Historical Society Museum on Main Street. While the news media (except this paper) would have us believe
See Mayor, page 18
André Gensburger/Clayton Pioneer
CLAYTON RESIDENT, EAD SURACHAI puts the finishing touches on this watercolor of The Grove. Dozens of artists and artisans will be on hand Mar. 6-8 for the sixth annual Creekside Arts Celebration sponsored by the Library Foundation.
Clayton’s gateway to the Town Center is one step closer to a major renovation. The city’s Redevelopment Agency has approved the final concept design for the area dubbed
See Arts, page 11
Early Claytonians share tea and memories DENISEN HARTLOVE Clayton Pioneer
Cell phones and Blackberrys were set aside and replaced with silver tea pots and home made cookies at the Clayton Historical
Society’s annual Camellia Tea in its downtown museum. There, members of Clayton’s pioneering families sat together with newer residents, sipping tea from fine china cups painted with flowers and sharing stories
City approves final design for renovation of Town Center entry TAMARA STEINER Clayton Pioneer
What started as a birthday celebration/informal art show for the Clayton Library has turned into a popular weekend event that may soon need additional room for all the artwork that is shown. “This has evolved with everything that the library has done,” said Arlene Kikkawa Nielsen, the library’s community events coordinator and president of the Creekside Artists Guild. “It has been so wellreceived. And this is the library’s 14th birthday, so we’ll even have cake.” This year’s Creekside Arts Celebration is themed “Cultural Legacies: Reflections of our Past.” It’s sponsored by the Clayton Community Library Foundation. The event includes both
“Daffodil Hill” at the corner of Marsh Creek and Clayton Roads. The project will include a new, stone-faced Town Center monument sign, a trail extension between the gateway and CVS (Longs), a “contemplation area,” and hillside landscaping. The new monument sign will
replace the crumbling “Town Center” sign that now stands at the top of the hill. This sign was originally put there by Presley Homes as a marketing tool for the Oakhurst development. It was always intended to be tem-
See Design, page 4
Tamara Steiner/Clayton Pioneer
THE TOWN CENTER SIGN THAT NOW STANDS at the corner of Clayton and Marsh Creek Roads was originally placed there by Presley Homes as a marketing tool for the Oakhurst development.
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of Clayton the way it used to be. The museum is on Main Street, housed in a building thought to have been Joel Clayton’s home. The house was rescued from its previous location near where the Clayton Public Library currently stands, and moved to its current location when the museum was founded in 1976. Visitors to the museum can see items from throughout Clayton’s history. Photographs of Joel Clayton and his wife Margaret Ellen McLay are hung in the front room near original diagrams by Clayton of his vision for the town. A dentist chair and church pews are found near an exhibit of Kathleen Callhan’s handmade lace handkerchiefs. Mining and ranching equipment is also displayed, a testament to the hard work of Clayton’s early residents. Museum Curator Mary Spryer said, “A lot of people just like the ambience because it reminds them of their grandmother’s house back east. It’s just like an old house feeling - it kind of brings back memories.” Spryer’s favorite area of the museum is the kids corner, where visiting groups of third graders and Cub Scout troops can handle the stereoscope, autograph books and telegraph machine and other historical items. “I sometimes direct adults to the corner,” laughed Spryer about the urge to touch everything in the museum. A LONG HISTORY IN TOWN Charmetta Mann, 68, a
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Denisen Hartlove/Clayton Pioneer
MANY OLD ITEMS FROM CHARMETTA MANN’S family are on display at the Clayton museum, among them this Victor adding machine that belonged to her father. Historical Society board member, donated her father’s adding machine to the museum, among other family artifacts. Today, Mann lives in the Pine Hollow area on land bought by her great grandparents Frederick and Elizabeth Frank in the 1900s. The Franks moved to the area around 1873, and purchased the acreage with money inherited from a family member who found fortune in the Alaskan
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Gold Rush. She remembered riding her bicycle from her parents’ home on Fifth Street in Concord up to her grandparents’ home in Clayton to ride her horse. Other tea attendees reminisced as well about Mann riding her horse around the grove of eucalyptus trees that once stood downtown, playing cowboys and Indians while the real John Wayne dined
See Tea, page 2
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