Cache is not inside the museum but it is touching it. Not all the people that work inside know where it is or what Geocaching is, but If they are open while you visit, please sign their guest log and thank them for supporting our geocaching pastime.
Tuolumne County’s jail was built in 1857 and rebuilt in 1866 after a fire purposely set by a prisoner. Over a hundred years later, in 1959, a new jail was needed and many felt the old building should be torn down because of the its condition and its prime location in Sonora. Carlo De Ferrari and Donald Segerstrom, though, believed it would be the perfect spot for the Tuolumne County Historical Society and the county museum which was then housed at the Veteran’s Memorial Building. The Board of Supervisors, the City Council of Sonora and the Historical Society agreed. It took some time to remove walls, paint, design displays, build display cases, install them,
and move items from the Veteran’s Memorial Building into the Museum in the jail. By 1969 the renovated jail began to show serious structural problems. Some of the walls had sunk down and were about ready to fall down. A major renovation was needed.
Patricia Hertert Rhodes provided the leadership and inspiration to secure community support and funds to begin the preservation of one of California’s cherished structures-the unique old jail in Sonora. The renovation plan called for a museum complex to be built in three phases: Phase 1, the construction of a new building to the north of the museum for storage and library use; Phase 2, the structural rehabilitation of the museum building (the jail) to make it safe for public occupancy; Phase 3, the conversion of what had been the prisoners’ exercise yard into a patio for use by the public for outdoor events.
Dick Dyer--Columbia College History Professor, Retired; Historical Society President in 1975; former member of the Museum Board; and a good friend of Pat and Dusty Rhodes wrote about the jail: “It is the best preserved jail of the 1860’s to be found in the historic Gold Rush country. It is a County Historical Site and is included in the National Register of Historic Sites. The old jail was used as a jail by the County of Tuolumne from 1866 until 1961 when a modern structure replaced it.”
Sharon Marovich reported in her 1996 Chispa article, “through the generosity of the Sonora Area Foundation, the historical society was able to purchase a computer which [would] perform a variety of functions for the organization”. That one computer had grown to 15 workstations printers, scanners, and a server by in 2011. The computers and everything that goes with them allow volunteers to manage over 30,000 three-dimensional objects, 30,000 historical photos, and a variety of other valuable artifacts. Scanning and cataloging all the photographs allows the originals to be better preserved and makes locating specific photographs much easier.
From 2009-2011 the Museum Board of Governors had a state-of-the- art shelving unit installed to reorganize and modernize the manner in which the collection is stored. Unfortunately, this renovation meant that the History Center was unable to conduct its normal business of assisting researchers, selling photos, and cataloging new items for over a year, but fresh paint and newly installed cabinets, carpeting, and workstations provided an even more productive and pleasant work environment for volunteers and the little Museum housed in the quaint, old jail continued to be a major draw for tourists. Volunteers assist researchers, history writers, students, travel writers, genealogists, and miners in search of old and new gold mines as well as locals doing research about the land they live on.
Both the Museum and the History Center have proven themselves to be living institutions able to change and adapt to a changing world. If you’d like to take a trip back in time, while you’re there, the Chispa which follows says, “take a moment or two to sit on the Museum’s front porch and enjoy the huge and very old sycamore trees and the quiet beauty of the 1800s garden... If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the sound of hoof beats and wagons creaking as they travel to and from Sonora along Bradford Avenue, which, in a time long ago was the main route into Sonora.