This Saturday will be
– quite literally – moving day for the Morgan Hill History
Museum. It seems to me this is a fitting way for South Valley to
kick off October as
”
History Month.
”
This Saturday will be – quite literally – moving day for the Morgan Hill History Museum. It seems to me this is a fitting way for South Valley to kick off October as “History Month.”
The local history museum is located in the old Acton House at the town’s Civic Center under the shadow of the landmark mountain El Toro. The building will be relocated to prepare for construction of the town’s new public library. The options were, tear down the charming little farmhouse home built in 1911 or move the museum off the site. Luckily, the decision was made to move it.
So in the dawn hours this Saturday, if all goes as planned, the museum – minus its roof – will roll down neighborhood streets several blocks to its new Monterey Road site facing the historic Villa Mira Monte house. (That late 19th-century mansion was once the abode of Hiram Morgan Hill for whom the town was named.)
Next spring, after the renovation project is completed, Morgan Hill’s museum will be re-opened to showcase the fascinating stories of this section of the South Valley.
I believe local history is the best kind of history. When you learn about your own community’s past, you begin to view it with new eyes. You start to realize that towns, like people, change over time. They evolve.
Local history puts the past into perspective for the benefit of the present. Study your city’s local history and you’ll gain insight into where the community just might be going. This knowledge is vitally important for the continual improvement of a place and its people – which is what history is all about anyway.
An awareness of a region’s history is essential for democracy to succeed. Great American leaders have always been keen students of history. This is no mere coincidence. A thorough knowledge of the past allows them far more options in making wiser decisions. History helps guide us away from the pitfalls of the past. It warns us, if we’ll listen, to beware of the political and social mistakes others before us have made.
History can thus be a practical subject. With a greater grasp of a region’s past, citizens and local leaders can better decide what direction their local community will head.
Sadly, many Americans today consider history a topic that’s as dull as dust. Perhaps too many high school history teachers with too little passion for the subject have presented the past merely as a boring list of dates and long-ago battles that need to be memorized for the purpose of a passing grade.
Why should anyone really care about history if a mere grade was all that was at stake? Of course the pages of any history textbook will be a huge yawn if the content has no context to students’ personal lives.
Luckily, that doesn’t have to be the case. When the inherent drama and conflict are highlighted, history can sweep students along in its grand parade
of humanity’s struggle to improve itself.
Our local history here in the South Valley region especially holds a rich heritage from the past. Study our area’s yesterdays and you’ll find an assortment of heroes and villains – and delightfully complex and quirky characters. You’ll uncover devious skulduggery, epic grandeur, comedy, tragedy, scandal, and juicy gossip worthy of the front page of any tabloid newspaper.
History, if presented well, can be far more entertaining than any soap opera or reality TV show. History, if presented as the pageantry of drama that it is, can be good clean fun.
It’s vitally important for the future benefit of a community to preserve its history – to remember where it comes from. And the dedicated volunteers at South Valley’s various historical societies do a good job of this.
Sometimes they face the bureaucracy of the city and county governments. Sometimes they lose the battle and historic homes and businesses get demolished and lost forever. Sometimes, as with the Morgan Hill History Museum, they come through and save locally significant sites from the bulldozers.
Preserving local history is important because it adds color to our community. It shows us that people haven’t always had the same culture and resources that we do now. We see that they lived life once upon a time in a very different style. From local history, we also learn that, on the deeper emotional levels, folks are still pretty much folks no matter where in time you might find them. And this helps us to develop a greater tolerance for all people we might meet.
Local history also puts into perspective where we fit in the time line of our civilization’s rise and fall. We often fail to recognize that right now – right here in South Valley – we are in the middle of our own history. Someday not far in the future, this present moment will be considered the past.
Maybe the people up ahead along the road will look back at our lives as quaint and simple – the same way we usually look back at the lives of the people now in our past. But no period of time is ever quaint and simple. Human history has always been turbulent and full of problems.
That common denominator connects us all – whether we be in the past, present or future. Maybe that sense of connection is the most important lesson history gives us. It’s something to think about this October throughout History Month.
Living the past
During October (or any other time of the year) visit some of the South Valley region’s excellent historic sites and history museums. Here are a few recommendations as well as telephone numbers for more information:
San Juan Bautista State Historic Park
TEL: (831) 623-4526
San Juan Bautista Mission
TEL: (831) 623-2971
Fremont Peak State Park
TEL: (831) 623-4255
San Benito County History Museum
TEL: (831) 635-0335
San Benito County History Park
TEL: (831) 635-0335
Morgan Hill’s Villa Mira Monte
TEL: (408) 779-3563
The Gilroy History Museum
TEL: (408) 848-0470
History Park San Jose
TEL: (408) 287-2290
Monterey State Historical Park
TEL: (831) 649-7118
