The Walbridge Fire has claimed a Sonoma County historical landmark, the 136-year-old Daniels School, a one-room schoolhouse that stood at 8162 Mill Creek Road and had recently been fully restored.
“It burnt to the ground, everything is pretty much devastated all the way back,” said Mike Hodgin, a Mill Creek resident who’s lived in the area since the 80s.
He said that the 2,7000 to 7,000 block is gone, as well as everything back behind that. He said Wallace Creek up from the “Y” where Mill Creek meets Wallace and everything up through there to the dead end is gone.
“It got really hot back there and torched,” Hodgin said. “It burned everything off of the trees in the steep part. There was no stopping it once it got there (in the canopy of the trees) and started crown fires.”
He said Mill Creek took a hit. Hodgin did say the winery Pucioni Ranch, on the right-hand side of Puccioni Road, made it.
“Of what fire crews they had, they did their best, they saved a lot of Mill Creek,” Hodgin said.
According to Hodgin and Jonathon Hodgin, the old Venado Post Office, which was the last remaining physical marker of the town’s existence, also burned to the ground.
The two sent photos of the devastation of Mill Creek and the photos depict an all too familiar scene, mangled cars, the shadow of where a home once stood where only a stone fireplace remains, downed trees and power lines and scorched earth.
The Daniels School was a labor of love
Mill Creek residents Bonnie Cussins-Pitkin, her husband Richard and their friend Sue Campbell, spent almost two decades working to restore the historical Daniels School.
After corralling volunteers to help during construction, organizing countless fundraisers to raise money for the project and searching high and low across two counties for finishing touches, the group completed the restoration of the building in late 2019.
In January 2020, they were even honored for their work and presented with a special recognition from the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society.
The restoration of the school, which closed its doors in 1951, held a special place in Cussins-Pitkin’s heart as she attended the school herself and met her husband there.
“It is especially wonderful that I went to school there myself. And it is just so amazing that it has happened,” Cussins-Pitkin told The Tribune in a Jan. 22 article.
The initial renovation of the school was started by Floramay Caletti, the founder of the Venado Historical Society. Caletti and her friend Eloise Batchellor started the restoration in the 1990s and Cussins-Pitkin picked up where Caletti left off in 2004.
