The Rio Vista Museum is on Front Street between Main and Sacramento Streets. The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays between 1:30 and 4:30. Today was warm (the local residents have assured me that it has not even begun to get HOT even though I have already begun whining) so after a brief romp near the boat launch and the public dock, Amber and I were glad to take refuge in the museum's cool interior and browse among the extensive collection of artifacts from earlier times. I had spoken with museum curator and local historian Philip Pezzaglia earlier in the week. He emphasized that the museum changes exhibits often because they have so much material. In fact while we were speaking a woman came in with a box of items to donate to the collection.
In the museum's kitchen exhibit Amber recognized the stove even though it was an earlier model than ours, and checked it out for edible spills.
But even though the old tools and implements and household items are charming, the real strength of the museum's collection is in the archives of photographs, letters, and newspapers. Drawing on this collection, his own private collection, and other private collections, Pezzaglia wrote Rio Vista, a book in the "Images of America" series. Many of the old photographs in this book show houses and other buildings constructed in the late Nineteenth Century that are still occupied and in excellent condition today.
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