By Mark Muckenfuss
Press-Enterprise
History can sometimes be a tenuous thing.
In the tiny desert town of Daggett, it seems to be hanging on the edge.
The town’s historical museum is closed. The Stone Hotel, first built in the 1880s and now owned by the San Bernardino County Museum, is closed. And the Alf’s Blacksmith Shop, which for years was on the cusp of becoming a museum, never did open.
Lawrence Alf, the last of three generations of Alfs in the town, died in August, and the blacksmith shop is now in probate, said Beryl Bell, 87, a member of Daggett’s historical society. The society also is closed.
“We’re in hiatus right now,” Bell said.
That hiatus is mainly due to the closing of the organization’s museum, which is mainly due to a robbery in 2004 on Christmas Day. Bell says the thieves took American Indian artifacts, a doll collection and some model trains.
An Associated Press story at the time said farm tools, toys and local rocks samples also were taken.
“They were professionals,” Bell said. “(Sheriff’s deputies) dusted for fingerprints and didn't find one.”
She said she believes most of the material was taken to be sold internationally.
“Anything Native American was probably out of the country within 24 hours,” she said. “They can get any price they want for Native American things in Germany or Japan.”
None of the stolen items has ever been recovered.
Bell works in the offices of the Daggett Community Service District. The locked-up museum is next door, in the same building, what’s left of its collections sitting almost within reach. People looking for the museum sometimes confuse the two and come into the district office. Bell said she tells them she can take care of their water bill, but not their curiosity about local history.
Before Alf’s death in August, he was president of the district. Bell says his family’s blacksmith shop is still full of memorabilia. Despite being named a Point of Historical Interest in 1974, the shop never officially opened to the public. Alf’s mother, Gertrude, would sometimes take private parties through her house and the shop.
“The Alfs had a lot to do with the history of Daggett,” Bell said.
Some accounts have the family blacksmith shop opening in the 1880s. The official historical designation puts the date at 1890.
What is known is that Seymour Alf, who founded the shop, oversaw not only its smith works, but the building of some of the 20-mule-team wagons that hauled borax from local mines. He also butchered and sold beef to the miners in Calico to the north.
Seymour’s son, Walter, saw the value in the old equipment, which fell out of use in the 1920s when automobiles made the shop obsolete. Gertrude told reporters that her husband kept everything.
A news story from 1980 says the shop contained a set of 8-foot-long bellows, the original forge, an anvil, numerous homemade tools, canteens used by the borax teamsters, two hand-powered coffee mils from 1882 and 1885 and the bell from the original Calico School. Horse-drawn wagons and a water cart were parked outside. Bell is certain it’s all still there.
Nearby is the Stone Hotel, where Death Valley Scotty and Wyatt Earp once stayed. It was damaged in the Landers and Hector Mine earthquakes, and the county has never had the funds to repair it. Visitors can only look in the windows.
Bell worries. She said it’s hard to find people interested in preservation among the town’s younger residents, and Daggett’s days as a thriving commercial center serving miners are long over.
“We've got more history than we've got present,” she said.
