The Old Mill, a nearly century-old grain elevator that stands 100 feet tall and symbolizes the area’s rural, agricultural past, is being donated to Murrieta, city officials say.
And the concrete tower may anchor a roughly 10-acre historic park being planned for downtown Murrieta.
“It is part of our history,” said Mayor Rick Gibbs, in a telephone interview Thursday, Sept. 12. “One of Murrieta’s challenges is that, as we grow, we have to maintain our quality of life. And that means recognizing and honouring those who came before us and made Murrieta a centre of farming and ranching in Southwest Riverside County.”
The Murrieta City Council is poised to approve an agreement to place the property in city hands Tuesday, Sept. 17,.
The acquisition comes as the city finalizes a master plan for Pioneer Park in the area bounded by Kalmia, New Clay, B streets and Second Avenue. The hope is to one day display a replica school and homes there.
Lea Kolek, parks and recreation manager, said the plan was headed for the council this fall.
That may be delayed, she said, to allow time to tweak the plan and wrap the mill into it.
The Old Mill is across the street from the park site, on the northwest corner of New Clay and A streets.
“It is an excellent example of the storage structures used in Riverside County when grain farming was done throughout the area,” Kolek wrote in a staff report. “The mill was constructed around 1918 so that local farmers could bulk-store their grain prior to sending it off to various milling companies in Los Angeles.”
Al Vollbrecht, one of the original city employees and an advocate for saving historical structures, said the elevator sat next to train tracks and a depot.
“And the tracks were eventually taken out,” Vollbrecht said.
But Kolek said the mill continued to operate into the early 1970s before being retired.
It was boarded up in 1991 in a bid to thwart vandals.
To preserve its history, the city began talking several years ago with late property owner Lu Tung about possibly giving it to the city, Kolek’s staff report states. Tung died before discussions concluded.
Wellington Loh Jr., Tung’s grandson, later agreed to the transfer. But Tung’s properties had to go through probate, the report stated. Title issues have since been resolved.
Besides its historical aspect, the Old Mill has a paranormal feature. According to various Internet reports, the building was ranked as the seventh most haunted place in America at one point. It is said to be haunted by a young girl who appears in the middle window of the tower.
Marvin Curran, an 84-year-old retired fire chief who grew up a block away from the Old Mill, laughed at the suggestion it is haunted.
“I don’t think so,” Curran said.
But Curran did recall that long ago a boy fell down a long tube and was badly hurt. “It took a while to get him out,” he said.
Curran said the building has eight tubes. “It was built like a honeycomb,” he said.
The structure was scaled by way of a rickety, spiral wooden staircase, he said. But that burned long ago.
As a child, Curran said, “I was over there all the time. I even worked there for a while.”
But just for a while, he said. “Me and a 100-pound sack didn’t get along very well.”
Hopefully, Vollbrecht said, the Old Mill acquisition will trigger a revival of historical preservation in Murrieta.
“The community has never had a good sense of itself historically,” he said. “A lot of our history has been lost in the last 20 years.”
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