German Culture Museum re-opens at its new location in Walnut Creek

  • By Tricia Flickinger
  • August 17, 2010
  • 285
                        
It’s not just a room full of rusty tools and yellow papers, but a place where visitors can come and learn about how Walnut Creek and surrounding areas got to where they are today. It has been nearly 30 years since the grand opening of the German Culture Museum in Walnut Creek, which was located in the house beside the Post Office, and the museum celebrated a re-opening in its new location on Aug. 14. “We moved and thought we would have a little get together to show people that we’re still trying to do what they had trusted us with by giving us this space,” said John Hochstetler, German Culture Museum board member. Back in the 1960s, two friends from Walnut Creek, Ed Schlabach and Wayne Hochstetler, started a project that involved finding historical treasures at auctions and attics, but there was a problem, they didn’t know where to put all of those artifacts. Ed’s sister, Ruth, received support from the community to open a museum for the items in 1980 in the house beside the Post Office and it officially opened on August 14, 1982. “It was very crowded, but it did what it was supposed to do,” John Hochstetler said. “Ruth Schlabach and Ed and everybody visualized that as the beginning, but they didn’t visualize that to be the complete display.” In 2007, the Walnut Creek community raised nearly a million dollars to construct the Walnut Creek Community Center, which houses the library, a public meeting room and now the new German Culture Museum. The land, where the community center is located, was donated by Ruth in her will. “Ruth was saying ‘I will give this land to a concept, that whatever goes in it there would be room for a bigger museum.’ The library has been up there for two years and we kind of struggled, but we put our heads together and came up with some sort of plan. It has taken us two years to go from there to here.” People that might have visited the museum before are urged to come back often because displays will be changing throughout the year. Some of the different displays featured now are a church room, school room, kitchen, tools, the John D. Rockefeller Surrey and other various historical artifacts. As visitors walk through the museum doors, they are greeted by a log cabin, which is a replica of an early building. The cabin is complete with an exterior and interior furnishings. The day of the re-opening, the museum board received a very special gift from one community member, an artifact from the broiler explosion that happened in Walnut Creek. “A man walked in and he had a wheel in his hand,” said Jonas “Der Weiss” Stutzman, the first pioneer of Walnut Creek. “He has loaned that to us, for the museum, and it is now located in a display case. It’s the only artifact we have from that explosion. When somebody walks in and gives us an artifact like that wheel, it’s just great and I had to avoid tearing up myself.” The museum features about 5,400 square feet of display area compared to about 1,400 square feet in the old house. “As you travel to other museums, most of them are self-guided rather than a tour like we did at the old museum, so we’re trying to catch up with the big boys so to speak,” John Hochstetler said. The museum is open now on Saturday’s from 9-2 p.m. and the museum hours will change once there are more volunteers. There is no charge to look around the museum, but donations are accepted.


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