For(r)estville-- a better name than Swindle Rig

May. 2, 1999

Gaye Lebaron

Press Democrat Columnist

They don't make chairs in Forestville anymore and there hasn't been a train in town since 1935. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as it's always been. While the impact of the late 20th century has altered the towns of Sonoma County markedly, some beyond recognition, Forestville's rural aspect endures.

There are no motels in Forestville. The only tourist lodging in its sphere of influence is down on River Road. Highway 116 passes through on its way to Guerneville, but it is the least-traveled of the two main routes to the river resorts. There are a couple of restaurants and one walk-up, drive-in that fairly screams "The Fifties.''

There is great interest in history in Forestville just now. Forestville School is about to celebrate its centennial. No, wait a minute. That's not exactly the way it is. Forestville School has BEEN celebrating its 100th birthday ever since school started in September.

As a result even a school child can tell you that 120 years ago Forestville was the site of one of the young county's most successful enterprises. About 30,000 chairs a year were crafted in Forestville and sold all over the American West.

And even a school child can tell you that the Forestville station was once the northern end of the line for the Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad, an electric line that accounted for the name of the Electric Hotel across the street from the station.

The pageantry marking the school's anniversary won't take place until next Friday, but the student historians have already made a mark on the community consciousness, pulling the whole town into the observance of the institution's anniversary.

The command post for this history crusade has been the fourth and fifth grade classroom of teacher Jeff Tobes, whose students have interviewed long-time residents, pored over old maps, dug into antique history books and atlases.

The information they have gathered has been shared with the rest of the school, bound in a book, painted on mural panels and set to music. Friday, in an all-day series of assemblies, each of the eight grades will "present'' the 10 decades of the school's history -- and the town's.

IN THEIR QUEST for school origins, the youngsters found themselves deep into town history as well.

In December, Tobes' 9 and 10 year old pupils marched out from the school carrying handmade, rainproof signs with which they marked the historical sites they had identified -- the railroad station, the Electric Hotel, Jewett's ice cream parlor, Andrew Jackson Forrister's saloon and hotel, the site of the old mill near Mirabel that gave Capt. John Cooper's 1834 El Molino Mexican land grant its name and the site of Cooper's house.

The town took its name from Forrister, who bought 100 acres of the rancho in 1866 and filed a plat map of a town, called Forrestville, in 1869. There doesn't seem to be a ready explanation for the discrepancy in spelling, or for what happened to the second R, for that matter.

According to the notes left by the late Burton Travis, a keeper of community history whose family settled there in 1865, there was already a community of sorts on the slope of the hill. Travis writes that, before Forrister, the place "was known as "Swindle Rig' because of a crooked barkeep.''

All due respect to the enterprising Forrister, it is regrettable that such a fine name as Swindle Rig should be lost to progress.

FORRISTER, a Missourian, like so many of the early settlers of these coastal valleys, was born in 1815 and named for the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, although he used the initials A.J. in business transactions.

Some histories say he came out over the Oregon Trail. Tobes' students' research indicate that he may have come with Peter Lassen, into the northern reaches of California. He married Cynthia Hooper in Healdsburg in 1851. Some accounts put him in the northern end of Green Valley as early as 1853, running a saloon and "hotel''(meaning he had rooms to rent) on a site that is now the corner of Highway 116 and Covey Road. His wasn't the first business, although the "Swindle Rig'' barkeep could have been in his employ. A man named Bump owned the first store. (Bump of Swindle Rig -- don't you love it?) Both Bump and Forrister were undoubtedly "squatters,'' two of the hundreds of settlers who could not buy land because the grant owners' titles had not yet cleared the U.S. Lands Commission, which had gained jurisdiction over California land in the settlement of the Mexican War.

Capt. Cooper's title was finally granted in 1858 and he sold several large parcels in the ensuing years. The 100 acres Forrister bought was from a man named Lackey, a third owner. The school children may not see the irony in the plat map of a subdivided town that Forrister filed with the county in '69, or in the 28 lots he sold. But their parents, many of whom have fought to keep subdivisions and developments from the community in recent years, may gulp a bit at the honors accorded Forrister, the first "developer'' as, in the words of one student, "our all-time hero.''

Still, when it came to naming, he was the man. When the town's first post office opened in 1872, in John Oliver's blacksmith shop, it took the Forrestville name. Two years later Forrister and family left for San Luis Obispo and never came back. He died in Chico, where his son lived, at the age of 102.

It was first chairs, and then trains that put the town on the map. Major Isaac Sullivan, the first settler in Green Valley, near Graton, made the first chairs of split oak with deer hide seats. In the 1860s, Samuel Faudre established an actual factory in Forestville. His chairs, now collectors' pieces, are unmistakeable, made from live oak, mountain ash, alder, chestnut and fir with latticed rawhide strips for seats.

The chairs were constructed with posts turned on a lathe while the wood was wet and the cross pieces made of dry wood. When drawn together and seasoned, the joints tightened, making a durable piece of furniture. The rawhide seats were also laced wet and, drying, drew tight into a permanently firm base. The chairs cannot be taken apart without using an axe on the wood.

"Forrestville chairs,'' selling for anywhere from $2 to $8 apiece were hauled in wagon loads of 200 to 400, up and down California, into Nevada and Arizona and as far away as Colorado.

The electric train, which extended tracks to Forestville in 1905, hauled apples to the packing sheds in Sebastopol and cherries and berries to the cannery in Santa Rosa. And it hauled passengers, on its interurban trolleys, from Green Valley to the larger towns -- ranchers to do their courthouse business, housewives to shop, older students to go to high school, business college or later, junior college.

The train was purchased by Northwestern Pacific in 1932 and passenger service was stopped in '35. The 30 years prior might be considered Forestville's glory days -- if you don't count today, that is.

BEFORE THERE was Forestville School, there was Harbine School, a single-room structure west of the present school site. It was outgrown and the first Forestville Schoolhouse was built, by community volunteers, of course, in 1899.

When it burned in 1934, the "can-do'' attitude was still in evidence. According to Travis' notes, the building burned in April; by June residents had formed a construction association. By July they had a contractor's license in hand and pledges of lumber and other materials from local businessmen. By December 31, the school was finished. The southern building on the current campus is that "homemade'' 1934 structure.

This school has always been the center of the Forestville community. Even if their kids are grown and gone, long-time residents tend to turn out for school events and volunteer their time in classrooms. The collected history that will be recounted again in September, when the town joins the party to mark the start of the school's 101st year, is a collaborative effort between students and their elders.

It would seem that this is a village that knows how to raise a child. The 1899 schoolhouse had busy train tracks at its front door

The P&SR comes to Forestville, 1905 The bus to the river resorts at the Electric Hotel, ca. 1915