KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – The Kelseyville Unified School District Board of Trustees will hold a discussion this week on a proposal to move the historic one-room Kelsey Creek School from the property where it's been located for 134 years to the Ely Stage Stop.
The meeting will take place beginning at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, at the district office, 4410 Konocti Road.
The Kelsey Creek Schoolhouse – also known as the Hells Bend Schoolhouse – was built in 1871. It is located on a one-acre parcel in the 3500 block of Finley Road East in Finley.
It is the only one of the county's old original schoolhouses that remains as it did when its district – in this case, the Kelsey Creek School District – lapsed and the school closed, according to “Lake County Schoolhouses,” published earlier this year by Tony Pierucci, the curator of the Lake County Museum system.
The Kelseyville Unified board has two agenda items related to the historic school on its Tuesday agenda.
The first is whether to accept a letter from a group calling itself Friends of the Kelsey Creek Schoolhouse, which is reporting that it intends to abandon a plan to relocate and rehabilitate the building.
The second item is a discussion on donating the school to the Lake County Historical Society, which has submitted a letter requesting the building.
Superintendent Dave McQueen told Lake County News that the second item is discussion only – no action will be taken on Tuesday night.
The letter from the Friends of the Kelsey Creek Schoolhouse explained that it had submitted a proposal in June 2014 to look at moving and renovating the building. However, it has concluded that its plans are prohibitively expensive, estimating that purchasing a new property, and moving and renovating the building could range between $250,000 and $380,000.
The group began talking with the Lake County Historical Society, which is now offering to take the building to the Ely Stage Stop and Country Museum on Soda Bay Road, where in 2007 the stage stop building itself was moved from across Highway 29.
Signing the letter to the board from Friends of the Kelsey Creek Schoolhouse were Marilyn Holdenried, Kelly Cox, Jerry Hook, Syd Stokes, Wally Holbrook, Peter Windrem and Gary Olson, who also sits on the school board and who asked that that discussion be placed on the agenda at last month's board of trustees meeting, McQueen said.
Voris Brumfield, president of the Lake County Historical Society, sent a letter dated Nov. 3 stating that the group had a “keen interest” in receiving the building.
She said the organization “has begun outreach to the community, local, state, and federal governments for assistance to move the building to the Ely Museum site and return the building to its original appearance. A mover has been contacted and permits as needed will be obtained. We are confident there will be no costs incurred by the Kelseyville Unified School District in this endeavor.”
What so far hasn't been addressed in the correspondence are issues related to removing a historical building from the location where it has been for more than 130 years. The possibility of leaving it at the Finley Road East location and renovating it there also has not been raised, but those matters could be brought up on Tuesday.
McQueen has been researching the property and its history, finding in the school's rolls some of his own family members.
He said the district's attorney also has been looking at what can and can't be done with the building, which sits on property donated for the school by the Rickabaugh family in 1882.
If the schoolhouse were to be moved, McQueen said he doesn't know if the district would sell the property. “The district could do more with the property if the building wasn't here.”
In November 2011, the county of Lake paid to have the building reroofed, as Lake County News has reported.
McQueen said the county also covered some other repairs inside of the building. However, since then, no one has been taking care of the building or visiting it, he said.
Ray Mostin, a farmer and former county supervisor who is a neighbor to the schoolhouse, disagrees.
He said he is one of a number of community members who have worked to preserve it over the years. Mostin said thousands of dollars' worth of repairs have been made to keep the building from deteriorating, and he continues to keep the grass mowed around it.
People frequently stop by to see the building, he said, adding that a couple held their wedding there not long ago.
He's been part of a group, the Hells Bend Restoration and Community Center Committee, that had worked to preserve and renovate the building. A document dated 1995 attributed to the group said that, at that point, between $15,000 and $20,000 had been raised for its upkeep.
A sign that is still in front of the building recounts the committee's efforts, and also notes that the building was an Eagle Scout project.
A history of the building Mostin shared with Lake County News explains that the original Kelsey Creek School was built in 1860 one mile north of Kelseyville on property that later was used for a pear orchard.
In 1871, that building was torn down and some of the materials were used to build the present school building on a site on the Quercus Ranch. There, the school site was located within a big bend of Kelsey Creek, which would earn the school one of its names, “Hells Bend School.”
A history of the school posted online by the Lake County Office of Education said the Hells Bend name was given to the area where the school was located because “several of the men living within that location went to town and got liquored up, there would be hell to pay between the neighbors when they returned home.”
In 1882, the school was relocated to its current site on Finley Road East, on land donated by the Rickabaugh family. There, it remained in use until July 1, 1920, after the district's smaller one-room schools were consolidated.
The Kelseyville School district and the Kelsey Creek Community Club signed a 25-year lease agreement for the building to be used as a community center in February 1947. Mostin said community members used to get together there for various activities, including playing cards.
There have been previous attempts to move the building since its closure in the 1920s that have failed.
Pierucci wrote in his book on Lake County's schools, “In the 1940s, an attempt was made to move the schoolhouse, but a group of citizens who wanted the building to stay where it was banded together and had the attempt stopped before it got off the ground.”
The Hells Bend Restoration group's history also recounted that in 1958 there was another effort to move the schoolhouse to the Lake County Fairgrounds in Lakeport.
In 2011, the school board also had considered selling the building as part of a plan to address its financial problems, but ultimately decided against it.
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