Sunday, May 4, 2014

O’Keefe Ranch

Vernon is a city through which we’ve driven many times – on our way to somewhere.  But somehow we never had the time to stop.  Well, on this trip, we decided some time there would be a good idea.

So off we headed, with no plan for what to see or where to go, other than a park we’d been told would be well worth the visit.

030.Polson Park, Vernon

Oh, how we would have loved to stroll and picnic there – but: ‘no dogs allowed’.  So that let us out.  We did a drive through and saw lovely gardens, tennis courts, jogging paths, an outdoor stage.  But, oh well.

The water fowl enjoyed a visit from this little girl:034

Then we headed for old downtown, which was lovely with brick sidewalks and shade trees, but nothing caught our eye as a place we wanted to particularly explore.

After that we thought we’d check out some RV parks for future reference, and then we saw the sign:035.O'Keefe Ranch

(Oops, I cut off the top of it).

We’d often talked about visiting this historic site, and now we had our chance (and dogs are welcome!).

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Much of the lifestyle of the O’Keefes has been preserved in their original mansion:

085.O'Keefe Mansion  087

Here’s just a few glimpses of what’s to be seen inside:090115114093113101

The serving dishes in one display each had a different bouquet of flowers in the center, indicating that they were all hand-painted:

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An elegant life-style indeed!

Outdoors and in other buildings were displays of various artifacts that showed this elegance wasn’t the rule of thumb, but rather it was a simple life of hard work for most.  For example, these were the kind of stoves they used:

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Believe it or not, in the first year of our marriage, we lived in a house with a similar type of stove, but it was oil-fueled, not wood-fueled.  So at least I didn’t have to chop wood LOL!

Then there is the blacksmith shop:062

Just look at these bellows, and imagine pumping that rod hour after hour to keep the fire hot:

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And the cook’s house:

051.Cook's house052

The cook may have prepared the meals to be served in that elegant dining room, but s/he went ‘home’ at the end of the day to a one-room cottage.

As much as the O’Keefe family lived elegantly, I’m sure it took many years of hard work to attain and then maintain that lifestyle.

There is a church and cemetery on the ranch, and I took the opportunity to do a little cemetery crawl.  When I can do some more study of the family history, I’ll share some of that with you.

Happy history!                 Blessings, Peg

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