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In This Issue...
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History
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Volunteers Form Mud Bricks to Restore Historic Castro Adobe
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Volunteers Form Mud Bricks to Restore Historic Castro Adobe
By Michael Thomas
When Charlie Kiefer stands on the trellised veranda of the Castro Adobe, off Larkin Valley Road near Watsonville, he looks out at a vista his ancestors once took in. Though the view has changed in the roughly 160 years since the adobe was built, it was here that his great-great-grandmother greeted arriving vaqueros, and where party-goers cooled off after taking a spin on the vast dance floor inside.
Time has taken its toll on the mud brick and stucco building, which State Parks purchased in 2002. Walls are collapsing at either end of the building and patches of fallen stucco reveal decay in the mud mortar that holds the walls together.
However, a major restoration and seismic retrofit is beginning. Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks is organizing teams of volunteers to make up to 3,000 new mud bricks using the same techniques used by Kiefer’s forebears and their Native American laborers.
Kiefer, who is 70, is serving as one of the project foremen.
“It’s fun â€" a little spirit of the ancestors going into the bricks,” he said.
The building is one of only four adobes that remain in Santa Cruz County, and the largest two-story adobe in the Monterey Bay region. It has the only “fandango room” outside of Monterey and also retains the attached cocina, one of only five examples left in the state of an early Mexican kitchen.
The Castro Adobe was built by Kiefer’s great-great grandfather, Juan Jose Castro, in either 1848 or 1849. It was the focal point for a rancho that once stretched over 11,000 acres, deeded to Juan’s father Jose Joachim Castro by Spanish Governor Arguello in 1823.
“The story that we get is they wanted to have a really centrally located large building so all the family could use that for fiestas and fandangos,” Kiefer explains. “All the marriages would be there as well.”
The adobe also served as a stopping point for travelers in need of rest or a fresh horse. According to Kiefer, travelers paid by dropping a few pesos in a basket on the steps, and anyone who needed a few pesos could just pick them up. Most of the real economy was in barter.
A Place of Refuge and Revelry
In 1907, Juan Castro’s sister, Maria de Los Angeles Castro Majors, described the early days of the Castro Adobe to a local newspaper.
“It was very grand and the timbers came in boats across the ocean, and the boards in the floor were danced thin to the music of the guitar, and every night there was music and song under the windows, where the young ivy was learning to grow,” Maria is quoted as saying.
As Kiefer tells it, Maria also recalled the young vaqueros riding up to the house. They tied up their horses, “doing it very slowly because they knew the señoritas up on the veranda were watching,” he said.
Though the building’s interior is now closed off, planned seismic retrofits may make it possible for visitors to once again set foot on the second floor dance hall, which is nearly 50 feet by 25 feet wide.
The adobe might not even be standing today if it weren’t for the efforts of renowned adobe historian Edna Kimbro, who purchased the property with her husband Joseph in 1988. They planned to restore the building.
However, a year after they bought it, the Loma Prieta earthquake, which was centered nearby, caused serious damage. According to Kiefer, FEMA offered disaster relief funds if the Kimbros would demolish the building and rebuild. They refused the money, living instead in a trailer until they built a house nearby.
In 2002, the property was purchased as a State Historic Park with the help of then-State Assembly member Fred Keeley. The adobe is also listed in the National Registry of Historic Places.
The restoration getting underway now is funded by the state at an estimated cost of $500,000. However, teams of volunteers are doing the hot, dirty work of making massive mud bricks.
Volunteers Still Needed
The mud bricks used in the Castro Adobe are the largest of any adobe building in the state of California, according to Randy Widera, Executive Director of Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks.
They are 28 inches by 14 inches by 4 inches thick and weigh about 75 pounds. Volunteers are forming them in wooden frames, using mud, dirt and straw.
“The bricks themselves will be as authentic as they can be,” Widera said.
Even the dirt used to make the mud had to be carefully selected, with the right balance of sand, silt and clay.
“They [restoration specialists] didn’t want them too strong, because they didn’t want them better than the bricks that are there by too much,” he added.
So far, about 260 bricks are laid out in rows in a vacant corral adjacent to the adobe property. It takes about four weeks for them to harden, and Kiefer goes out twice a day to spray them down with a hose. “They are drying out a little fast and we are afraid they are going to crack,” he said.
Brick building will continue during the coming weekends. Lots of help is needed to meet the goal of at least 2,500 bricks. But so far there has been lots of interest from locals wanting to see their handiwork become part of the historic structure.
“We have at least 90 [volunteers] signed up,” Widera said. “We are having a hard time managing all the interest.”
The bricks will be used by specialists to reconstruct portions of the walls and begin the seismic stabilization. Then later this year or early next year, holes will be drilled down through the tops of the walls to add steel reinforcements.
Widera said the building’s historical importance is virtually unrivaled in the region.
“It’s so significant to have something like this. It’s a real diamond,” he said.
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