Valley Center history museum closes
Valley Center’s popular history museum will be closed for the next few months to undergo a major and much needed expansion project.
Since opening in 2003, more than 32,000 people from every state in the Union and from more than 40 foreign countries have signed the guest book at the small museum next to the Valley Center library on Cole Grade Road.
“When we opened the museum 12 years ago I don’t think any of us anticipated the response we would have,” said museum Historian Bob Lerner. “It kind of caught us off guard how well received and how many tourists and visitors along with people from the area would come.”
The museum quickly outgrew its current confines, Lerner said, forcing many popular exhibits to be placed in storage.
The new 700-square-foot wing will expand the museum by 50 percent, permitting many of the displays to return to public view and making room for new additions — including a fully restored 1848 stage coach.
“During the Civil War it was an ambulance. During the homestead era it was driven out here from Kansas and for about 30 years it provided transportation between Valley Center and Escondido,” Lerner said.
Later the stage coach appeared in numerous Hollywood movies until being abandoned in Warner Springs in 1949.
“It’s one of these rare, rare stage coaches that has a pedigree,” Lerner said. “It’s an amazing piece,”
Officials hope the construction project will be completed and the expanded space reopened by October.
The museum is chalk full of fun exhibits, many celebrating the lives of famous people who have lived or spent time in the area such as John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Steve (“Hercules”) Reeves, Randolph Scott, June Allyson and Dick Powell.
A stuffed California grizzly bear standing on its hind legs has always been the museum’s focal point and will remain so
In 1866, a grizzly weighing 2,200 pounds — the largest of its kind ever recorded — that had been threatening both man and cattle, was killed in Valley Center. California grizzlies have been extinct since 1924, but at one time thousands roamed the state. The bear on exhibit is a bit smaller, standing 8 feet and weighing about 1,200 pounds when it was alive.
Although Valley Center had been settled in 1845 and homesteaded in 1862, it had no formal name until the bear incident. News of the huge bear led people to call the area Bear Valley but later the name had to be changed because another Bear Valley already existed in the northern part of the state. Valley Center got its current name in 1887.
For more information, visit the museum’s website at vchistory.org.
