Today I went to Grape Day Park in Escondido CA. I stumbled upon the park while I was searching another area looking for clues for something else entirely. But, I had my camera and saw the park and decided to stop and take a look.
This is the Old Santa Fe Depot from the 1890's, that was moved from its original location to the park to keep it from being demolished. Inside the Depot they had an old telegraph that you could still use, and upstairs was the old freight room with a huge scale on the floor for weighing all freight that would go on the train.
This is the first library in the town of Escondido from the 1890's. It was also moved to the park and preserved. Inside the Library was a display of clothing, shoes, and hundreds of pictures of families who lived in the town of Escondido. They had lots of Fairs. The Grape day fair was a beggie. Back then this was wine country and most farmers grew grapes.
This was an old train from around 1910 - 1920. The train only went to OceanSide Ca. You could not take the train directly to San Diego. You still can't. You have to take the train to OceanSide get off and take another train to San Diego.
Both sides of the train would be full of seats just like these. The nice thing about the seats is that if you had a group of four, you could slide the back rest forward and face your group. Each seat moved like this. I wish seats today still did this.
This is the mail room on the train. The person in the mail room would pick up the mail while the train was still moving from a hook and dump it on the table. From there he would sort the mail in the cubes by cities that the train would stop in.
This was the Black Smiths shop that is still a working Black Smiths shop. They were giving classes in the one with the door open
This was a barn from the 1800's, but it was locked and there was not an option to see inside.
This was a Residence from town that was saved. It was a two story three bedroom home with a family of 10 living inside. Eight Children (4 boys and 4 girls ) a Pastor and his wife. The furnishings were not original to the house, but were period appropriate. The staircase was much smaller than today's staircase. I was no more than two feet wide. There was a balcony upstairs off one of the bedrooms, but was no more than three feet by three feet. French doors opened to this balcony, maybe it was a smoking porch, thats about all you could do out there.
