Crockett Historical Museum

We really enjoyed visiting the Crockett Museum today. The host Dick was super-friendly. We enjoyed seeing the old telephone switchboard, a phone booth and old fire equipment. This place is like a combo museum/boutique.We wrote about it as part of our day trip to Crockett here: https://medium.com/@52BayAreaDayTrips/crockett-day-trip-sugartown-11c6b98fa48e

What a lovely little gem of a building that takes you back in time. 3-4 rooms filled with old town memorabilia and historical sales and product from the sugar factory next door. It was free to get in, but gently asks for donations to help support. Lots one star from me as I would have really liked more description information on the different items. Otherwise you really are not sure what you are looking at :(

I stepped WAAAAY back in time.. and loved it, savoring every moment there... Open on Saturdays. we stopped in before heading to Dead Fish restaurant.. on a most gorgeous, warm, sunny day.Inside is memorialized every thing from eras past, and documents well the key players and movers/shakers that formed Crockett.. from the story of Superior court Judge Joseph Crockett, to his story of obtaining the land that is now Crockett from the Soto/Briones families as rendered payment, Tom Edwards and his "Little Valley"...the wonderful evolution of the C&H sugar factory... The hoots: an old Lions Club photo framed, in which a mock wedding was put on.. every member, including the bride and the flower girls.. male!! A photos of Ollie North, a super old TI process computer, an ancient Kirby vacuum cleaner, old ironboards, old pianos from Ludwig Co, and a whole lot more. Stories about Italian and Portuguese immigrants, Zampa (his son was visiting, literally standing under the sign of his father's memorial bridge when we were there)... the musical family Pallotta, drummer and accordionist... very very fascinating stuff.Plus, the kicker of being inside of an historic train depot! Great spontaneous surprise!

The history of Crocket and C&H Sugar is well represented in this museum. Housed in a historic train station in the shadow of the C&H Sugar plant, it is filled with an eclectic mix of historic items. At first it seemed disorganized. Then as I walked around looking at the displays it made perfect sense, they have found room for anything and everything that people have donated and all these treasures land wherever there is room for them. I enjoyed the old photos and my favorite was a photo of the Sugar Parade.The volunteers are very friendly, and the people I talked to were all lifetime residents of this small town. They know the history of the town and are happy to tell you about it.

It's either a 1 star or a 5 star kind of place, depending on your mood. I went with 2 friends after seeing Clayton Bailey's robot museum kitty-corner from this place (now that one's 5 stars). We laughed all the way through: a charcoal portrait of Oliver North, someone's random golf trophy, a miniature church displayed on top of a pool table and dedicated to Woodrow Wilson, Clorox bleach bottle transformed into a pig (and gathering dust in the "display case"). All of this mixed in with memorabilia about the adjacent C & H Sugar factory. Kind of an anti-museum. Pairs beautifully with the Bailey Museum for a fun afternoon.

As the great-great-great-grandson of the homesteader of Crockett, Thomas Edwards, my review may be a little bias. This train station that my grandfather departed from to fight in Korea for the USMC now houses quite a collection of history from my family, C&H and many other families that have made Crockett the cool little coastal town that it is today. I have a bunch of Edwards family and C&H stuff I need to donate to them. If you museum curators read these reviews, drop me a message here and I will give you a list of things that I would like to donate to the museum. Anyway, for the rest of ya's... go in and check it out if your're in Crockett. The place is literally, wall to wall history with some good people running it. I can't wait until my son is old enough to go in and appreciate where his family is from and what they started along with the help of Judge Crockett. .It also houses the worlds largest sturgeon. :)

Fun way to spend some time, learning about local history. I want to go again.

Glo, my mother-in-law, recently moved to Hercules from Oceanside, who has been going thru a fit of mover's remorse about moving from there to here, has, lately, been getting a bit more with the program and doing a bit of exploring of that little stretch of area along the Carquinez straits and finding places that she likes. So for Memorial Day, she took us to the old C&H company town of Crockett in hopes that the Deli she liked was open. Well, the deli wasn't open, but what *was* open, by the railroad tracks, just in front of the main entrance to the big C&H Sugar plant, .. was the Crockett Museum and Historical Society.. normally open Wednesdays and Sundays but also open on Memorial Day... because Crockett, being a *little* town.. with a *long* history and occupied by families who have been there for multiple generations.. actually *does* remember its past.. including its people who went off to war and those who came back alive and those who did not..And so on this Memorial Day, not only was the museum open, but it was open and hosted.. Many of the resident veterans (some from WW II.. others from conflicts of more recent occurrence) were milling about. Friendly volunteers invited us to help ourselves to their home-made brownies and cookies and biscotti and store-bought chips and dips as we wandered through this down-home museum that had the feel of an old storehouse in which during the last three-quarters of a century anybody in the down of Crockett who felt they had anything of interest to deposit simply did so. Everything just laid out on open shelves and tables.. much like if it were sitting in a general store.. very little behind glass.We wandered among old posted news clippings and photos Carquinez bridge construction work, stories of local war veterans.. the years when Mare Island, not too far away was a bustling ship yard.. one alcove was filled with photocopies of senior yearbook photos of the small highschool from the early part of the last century to the present posted over the available wall space.. Old equipment and packing sacks from the sugar refinery.. a scale model of St. Patricks Cathedral in New York that I guess somebody local put together and wanted to leave *somewhere.* A replica of a record-sized sturgeon that someone had caught in the area.. and the very ordinary-sized fishing rod he had used to land it.. military paraphernalia dating from before WW I.. and personal written declarations from veterans, including one more or less denouncing the Vietnam War and the dead and the wounded it cost us for no discernible reason..Seems like *anything* a Crockett resident cared to bequeath on the place got bequeathed and found a place for.. I could have spent hours here.. but the young men in our group were eager to move on.. so after 40 minutes, I sighed, slipped a fiver into the (completely voluntary) donation box and moved on..

This was a fun stop and the whole reason I made a trip to Crockett.They have a wild miscellany of city history, industrial equipment, hobbyist work, and local flavor. I think I spent about 45 minutes wandering through the place, which is probably plenty unless you read everything. But I definitely recommend it for anyone who is into tiny museums - about 4-5 rooms that used to be a train station.Sadly, there's not that much that has that train station feel. But aside from that, if you've never seen a cream separator, punch card sorter, or a scale model of the National Cathedral (D.C.) and want to, this is your place.Staffed by friendly, knowledgeable docents who take pride in Crockett's history.

Such a quaint and interesting place... very diverse eclectic selection of historical artifacts. Better than that is the staff...I can't remember her name but we had such a great discussion about the history of the area and economic and regional development, growth and change. There is an amazing giant church reproduction, old fashioned phone operator board, presentation of sugar processing samples old uniforms... just a lot of really cool memorabilia.