By Barry Eberling | DAILY REPUBLIC | July 25, 2008
Ed Fleck, a volunteer with the Solano County Historical Records Commission, makes archival book shelf ends at the county archive's old location on Enterprise Drive. The archive has been moved to a cleaner, modern location. Photo by Brad Zweerink
FAIRFIELD - A key Solano County history collection as of this week has a brighter -- and cleaner -- future.
The county archives have moved, leaving a dusty Enterprise Drive warehouse where they shared space with desks, chairs and other surplus county property. Now they are in a specially designed section of a warehouse at 815 Chadbourne Drive that looks like an office. The space is clean and temperature controlled.
Archives volunteer and local historian Leslie Batson called the new location a 'nirvana' for protecting delicate, old documents. The aerial photos, deed books, voter registers, naturalization records, marriage license applications, maps and other records are from bygone eras dating back to the 1800s.
The move proved far more difficult than a quick trip along city streets with a U-Haul.
'People think you can just kind of load things up and move them to another site,' Batson said.
Not so with the archives. All of those documents and materials are in a certain order. They had to be arranged and labeled so the professional movers put them back in the same order at the new site.
Volunteers cleaned decades of filth off old books prior to the move. There was no use in doing so at the Enterprise Drive location because the dust was insurmountable.
Ed Fleck is among the volunteers who worked on the move. He recently covered boards for the ends of the shelves in clear, Mylar plastic to protect old volumes from acids in the wood. He helped fix fasteners on 52 metal cabinets that hold such things as probate records.
Such small tasks are a cinch for Fleck, given that he is a retired aircraft mechanic. He also appreciates the information that can be found in the archives' files and volumes. He has found plenty on his own family.
'My mother's family came to Solano County in the late 1800s,' Fleck said. 'They were farmers. They had a farm out here in Denverton.'
Denverton is now gone without a trace, although it still shows up on some American Automobile Association maps as being located a few miles east of Suisun City. But property and other records documenting the family history live on at the archives.
The archives got leaner for the move. Such items as 1880s Sacramento newspapers are no longer in the collection.
See the complete story at the Daily Republic online.
