OUT AND ABOUT

The Revival of Edna

Back when stagecoaches and steam trains were the main modes of transportation, townsites grew up around their stations, and one of them was right along what is now at the intersection of Highway 227 and Price Canyon Road in the Edna Valley. BY JEANETTE TROMPETER, KSBY NEWS

ong before there were acres of vineyards and sprawling ranches in Edna Valley, there was a community here known simply as Edna. “Back in the day, this was the town. This was the town of Edna, and everything surrounding it was part of this original townsite,” says Amy Griffith of Sextant Wines. An old, tin edifice built by John Tognazzini in 1906 now serves as the tasting room for Sextant, but the building once housed the town of Edna’s general mercantile downstairs with a hotel and dance hall upstairs. The bones of the old dance hall stage still exist in what is now office space for the winery. An old farmhouse Tognazzini built in 1908 for his family still stands, as well. Today that farmhouse is a place where travelers can escape to the Central Coast and go back in time. There is also a little cabin on the property that has quite a history. “Oh goodness,” giggles Griffith. “Well, we call it the crib; the children of the Tognazzinis actually slept in there and the parents slept in the back of the general store. But as time moved on, the cabin was taken over by the ladies of the evening,” she explains. Edna definitely has a history, but who or what inspired the name of the town is a bit of a mystery. “Edna is kind of elusive,” says Griffith. “Edna may be the woman in a painting in the house, or she could be a racehorse, or she could be someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, a nun. We have no idea actually where that came from.” The most likely eponym is the granddaughter of the original owner of the townsite, Lynford Maxwell, a farmer from Pennsylvania who founded the town in 1894. Old Edna thrives today largely because it was rediscovered in the 1970’s by a man who loved its history and saw its potential as a hub of activity. It was his daughter, Pattea Torrance, who made it her mission in the late 1990’s to restore the whole place. “This riding wheel was built by my father, ‘The Duke,’ in the 70’s for my mother because she wanted to get away from all these kids she had,” Torrance laughs as she takes me inside a traveling wagon, which looks like something in which gypsies would have traveled from town to town. “My mother needed a little place she could go to write poetry, sing songs, and watch the moon go both up and down. She wanted to get away from it all. My father built this within a day after seeing gypsies down in

LPismo Beach,” she says. Torrance’s dad was intrigued with artists, musicians, and wanderers. She is intrigued with preserving memories of the past through restoring history’s remnants and giving them new life. There are traces of her story and the area’s past all over the place. Old Edna today is a resurrection of and a tribute to the heydays of the Wild West and the free-spirited characters who inhabited the valley. While Edna might have been a hub of action at the turn of the 20th century, these days the vibe of Old Edna is all about kicking back and slowing down enough to absorb the magic of the town that helped put this lovely corner of the world on the map. “Those were Edna days then. These are Edna days now,” says Torrance. “It’s a happy place to be.” Old Edna hosts free, self-guided walking tours. Follow the signs and townsite maps to discover the area’s hidden historical artifacts and treasures.

SLO LIFE