Building damaged by fire an historic colony home
Atascadero Historical Society discusses plans for building
–The Atascadero Historical Society has plans for structure mentioned in the news coverage of the fire near the 101 freeway and the Del Rio intersection.
There was a grass fire on both sides of the 101 freeway at Del Rio Thursday afternoon, July 28. In the reporting, the fire on the east side of the freeway burned, and in some stories completely destroyed, a structure on the vacant lot which has been widely reported as abandoned. The Atascadero Historical Society says that this abandoned building, actually an original colony house, is not, nor has ever been abandoned.
The society said that they would like to thank all the motorists, either from the freeway or El Camino Real who stopped to help stop the spread of the fire. They said they are especially grateful to the staff of the El Camino Self Storage facility, the next door neighbor, for bringing their own fire extinguishers and hoses to fight the flames. The society said it would like to express their continuing appreciation to the men and women of the Atascadero Fire Department and Cal-Fire whose daily efforts keep the community safer.
For the past several years, the Atascadero Historical Society has been working with different owners of the property to save this historical house. The society has undertaken the development of a new site, named the Colony Heritage Center, located near the Atascadero Library. Last year the society moved “the Cabin” from the grounds of the Junior High School to this new site. We are now in the process of getting approvals to move two Historic Colony homes to this site later this year.
The home that was damaged is one of the two homes we are planning on moving this year. This house, built for the Rordorf Family, was started in 1914 and completed in 1915. Fortunately, the fire caused less than 10-percent damage to this house, almost none to the original interior. Once moved and restored, this house will be used to store all of the photo and paper artifacts of the society. In addition to the original physical archives being stored in this house, the general public will have access to a bank of computers to do research using the photos and articles of the past that are housed in our archives. These archives are being digitally captured into a state of the art computer system, which will also allow for web browsing.
