By Pierre Ratte
Grange Halls are found in towns all over America. Healdsburg has a Grange, it’s located at 311 Monte Vista Avenue. Healdsburg’s Grange Hall #400 is much less scenic than the one in Chalk Hill pictured here.
Bennett Valley has a Grange; its Grange Hall #16 was established in 1873. Bennett Valley’s is reportedly the oldest continually operating hall in California. Chalk Hill’s Grange was established in 1870, making it one of the first granges in the state, established just three years after the first grange in the country in Fredonia, New York.
The first Grange Hall in California, according to California’s Historical Landmark register, was Grange Hall #1, located in El Dorado County in the town of Cool. (How cool is that?) The Grange in Cool was founded in 1870, but a dedicated building was not erected until 1879.
Fun Facts: The Grange’s full name is: National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Eight individuals sitting around a wooden table started it in 1867. The eight founders of the Grange are memorialized with a marker on the National Mall; it is the only private marker on the Mall.
It was started to advance agricultural knowledge and social activities in the wake of the Civil War, and the organization’s political activism increased in order to help protect family farming from larger business interests. So-called Granger Laws in Midwestern states were passed in the 1870s to restrain railroads and grain storage facilities from overcharging for small farmers’ short-haul and storage needs.
The Grange motto is: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” The Grange declaration of purpose includes these timely words: “We shall constantly strive to secure harmony, good will, and brotherhood … We shall earnestly endeavor to suppress personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices … We desire a proper equality, and fairness; protection for the weak; restraint upon the strong; in short, justly distributed power. We propose to develop a better and higher manhood and womanhood…”
The Shed, located at 25 North St., was dubbed Healdsburg’s modern Grange. Built as a cafe/retail/event space in 2013, it now carries on as Little Saint in a somewhat similar vein with food and music offerings.
