SEARCHING FOR HISTORIC HOUSES

THE LARSEN HOUSE

Today was the first seriously hot day, so even Amber was just as glad not to be chasing rabbits. Instead we pursued houses. With Historic Houses of the Sacramento River Delta as a guide, I set the aim of finding three houses that were close to Rio Vista. The first, the Larsen House, is on the corner of Second and Bruning Streets in town. It was built in 1897 by Lars Larsen, an enterprising Danish immigrant who arrived in California in 1877 when he was 22 years old. He became Captain of a lumber schooner on the delta's rivers, then a lumber dealer, and one of the founders of the Bank of Rio Vista.

THE CHURCH HOUSE

We continued out of town on Second Street after taking a short detour into Sandy Beach Park to see if we could cool off in the river. A great many other people had the same idea and the beach was brightly crowded with picnicking families, fishermen, swimmers, all very charming but not conducive to a good off-leash run of the sort that had been Amber's previous experiences at the park before summertime arrived. So we continued out Second Street, having been advised that this was the best route into the Montezuma Hills area that Historic Houses referred to. Second Street became Montezuma Hills Road, and one of the houses from the book soon appeared on high ground to the left of the road. There is some confusion about which house it was, since evidently two (or more?) of the pictures in the book have been switched and do not correspond to the historical facts printed next to them.

It seems reasonable to assume that this is the Church House, which was built in the 1880's, a good ten years before the ornate Victorian embellishments of houses like the Larsen House became fashionable. Also, its location on high ground would have seemed prudent to builders who could remember the flood that completely destroyed the first town of Rio Vista in 1862.
In 1902 another Danish immigrant, Perry Anderson, bought the property and his family continued to farm the surrounding land for several generations.

THE ANDERSON HOUSE

We continued our drive through Montezuma Hills taking side roads that led through huge wind farms, past a herd of more than fifty beautiful black horses, over hundreds and hundreds of acres of golden hills high above the delta's rivers and sloughs. At the junction of Montezuma Hills and Birds Landing Roads we came upon the Anderson House, which was referred to as the Robert Donald House in the Historic Houses book. Robert Donald was an Irish immigrant who built the house in 1891 and lived there until about 1918 when he leased the property to yet another Danish immigrant, Neil Anderson, whose family subsequently purchased it and has been farming it for five generations.

Ian Anderson walked up to our car when we pulled into the broad lane leading to the house and outbuildings. With the civility typical of delta natives, he asked if he could help us with anything. I told him I was searching for the houses in the book, showing him the ancient volume. He looked through it, pointing out that the pictures didn't match the information for the two houses that had sheltered generations of Anderson families from Denmark. It was he who had recently completed restoring his family home. He gave me permission to walk up closer to the house to take pictures, and on the way I met his father, who was sitting in a pickup truck next to the barn.

When we left the Anderson farm, we took the Birds Landing road to see where it went, which was to Highway 12 west of Rio Vista. On our way back to town we passed Trilogy where we could see the Andersons' rootless contemporaries puttering about in their little golf carts.