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News filtered out this week that Sonoma County Regional Parks is interested in applying for a grant from CalTrans to fund the feasibility study for the new trail –an extension of the West County Trail — that would connect Sebastopol and Petaluma along the old Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad route. The catch is CalTrans needs a local 10% match. Regional Parks planner Ken Tam estimates for 13 mile study will cost $196,000, meaning nearly $20,000 to match. Parks does not have available funds for the trail until 2013. The funds must be shown as available at the time of the application and the application deadline is March 30. The Santa Rosa Bicycle Club and the City of Sebastopol may each be able to put in a small percentage. The Sebastopol TrailMakers and Bike Walk Sebastopol are looking at ways to raise the remainder in time.
Trek over right-of-way of Liberty Branch of Petaluma-Santa Rosa Railroad, Petaluma, Calif., 1955 (photo courtesy of the Sonoma County Library)
Shortly after writing about going to the movies, I was going through a number of photos that my family donated to the Sonoma County Library’s photograph collection and ran across a good image of the old Speas Distillery that was demolished in the late 1980s. Laguna Park Way now runs through the footprint of the old building (also partially used for a City of Sebastopol parking lot). The former bonded warehouse and future Sebastopol Cinema is located behind the distillery. As a kid, I didn’t pay much attention to the distillery — it was just one more rusting and semi-derelict industrial building at the edge of downtown. Fortunately my father took a few photos of those buildings that are either long gone or have been radically transformed.
Speas Distillery building in 1979 (photo by Hal Skinner)
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- Going to the Movies (socolife.wordpress.com)
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