Artifact of the Month

This student desk was used in one-room schoolhouses across America 100 – 130 years ago. This desk and its story takes us back to the time when one teacher taught grades one through eight in one classroom. The desks and their attached benches were bolted to the floor in rows facing the chalkboard at the front of the room. 

California, once nicknamed the Bear Flag Republic and now the Bear Flag State, adopted this bear-shaped object as the State Prehistoric Artifact in 1991. Chipped from meta-volcanic rock by California Indians 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, this artifact resembles a short-faced bear. Archeologists speculate that it is made by the same chipping process used to fashion arrowheads and spear points and that its unique shape suggests it was probably connected to religious practices. Since its 1985 discovery by a Cypress College student working on an archeology dig in Southern California, it has been called the Chipped Stone Bear. It is considered one of the earliest pieces of art known in the Western United States.

In 1900, there were 20 million horses and only 4,000 cars in the United States. Today, gas stations are everywhere, but when cars were fi rst invented, gas stations were not yet around. People bought their gasoline at the general store. They filled their own buckets with gasoline and used a funnel to pour it into the car’s gas tank.

The increase in automobile ownership after Henry Ford started to sell cars that the middle class could afford resulted in greater demand for gas. In 1905, about 25,000 cars were manufactured in the United States and Sylvanus F. Browner perfected a pump that would take gas out of a barrel and fi ll a car’s tank. The first “filling stations” started opening that same year.

The pocket adder, formally called an addometer, was just one of several items commonly found in a woman’s purse in the 1950s. Pocket adders were used to perform simple mathematical problems and were primarily used by women when grocery shopping or paying household bills.

The Constitution of the State of California is the document that establishes and describes the duties, powers, structure and function of the government of California. The original constitution was adopted in November 1849 before California could become a state in 1850. Drafted in just over a month by a diverse group of delegates, the 19-page Constitution of 1849 outlawed slavery, defined citizenship, secured women’s separate property rights, made California officially bilingual with English and Spanish languages, set the state’s boundaries and established a framework for government. It guided California for 30 years and even served as a model for Argentina’s Constitution. 

On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was shaken by a powerful earthquake that was followed by a devastating fire. To understand the scope of the disaster, newspapers are perhaps the best primary sources of information because they provide immediate eyewitness accounts of the events. While newspapers of that era were never completely accurate, survivors and their descendants certainly have validated the intense emotions of those who lived through this extraordinary part of history. 

LOSS IS $200,000! This was a gross underestimate: the losses actually totaled $400 million, the equivalent of about $6.5 billion in today’s dollars.

A smudge pot is an oil-burning device used to prevent frost on fruit trees. Generally a smudge pot has a large round base with a chimney coming out of the middle of the base. Growers used to place smudge pots between trees in an orchard; the heat and smoke from the burning oil kept the air just warm enough to prevent frost from forming on the trees. Growing citrus is a very big part of California’s agricultural economy. The Spanish missionaries who founded the missions in California were some of the first people to grow citrus in the state. With the growth in population during the Gold Rush, commercial citrus production also grew, to supply the miners with fresh oranges. Citrus production boomed with the introduction of refrigerated railroad cars in the 1880s, allowing the state’s fruit products to be marketed throughout the nation.

70 years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which eventually led to the forced removal of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II. These simple flyers, announcing the relocation of all persons of Japanese ancestry, were posted across California, Oregon, Washington and parts of Arizona ordering the evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry throughout the coastal states. Along with instructions on where to assemble, the flyers also stated what a family should and should not bring with them; among the items not allowed were pets, household goods, and furniture. Some families had as little as 24 hours to prepare to leave. They had no idea of where they were going or how long they would be gone.

This sharply pointed, loop-handled metal rod is fitted with a circular band that held a candle in place and lit the way for miners working underground in dark hard-rock mine shafts. When miners required lighting in specific areas, they would thrust such rods into the mine’s wall to make a candleholder. A “Sticking Tommy” could be removed and reused when needed.

This weathered bell is a early twentieth-century replica of a mission bell guidepost that once marked the original route of the El Camino Real, The King’s Highway, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These bells gave travelers the distance to the next town and directions to the missions. Originally a footpath traveled by the Franciscan missionaries, El Camino Real reached from San Diego to Sonoma, connecting California’s 21 missions. Over time, the small footpath evolved into a busy road wide enough to accommodate horses and wagons, and is considered to be the first roadway in the state. Today, large portions of Highway 101 follow the original route of El Camino Real.