Sperry Flour

Whew! Too much New Year's introspection! I think I need to get out more....

I started by wandering around the Railroad Square area after my Aztek Mocha  in search of an interesting photo that I haven't taken many times before. This little building caught my eye initially because I liked the old Sperry Flour sign but secondly because of the ladder seemingly going nowhere useful...sort of like my thoughts of late. 

A Google search yielded the fact that the flour industry was established in California before the Gold Rush.. The Sperry company had mills up and down the West Coast including in Tacoma, Marysville, Vallejo, Stockton and Los Angeles. Almost all of them appeared to be housed in large brick buildings. I'm not a fan of brick, but I like this jaunty little building with its tile roof and bright blue trim.

The sign on this building appears to be built in as if it had some official function in the grand Sperry Flour scheme of things,  but I was unable to find any mention of Santa Rosa in this article. I do like the history of this warehouse area next to the railroad tracks and the fact that a lot of the old buildings still exist. They still tell the story of a town that once relied on agriculture and a complex system of railroads for its connection to the San Francisco Bay.

It is interesting that just one of the many railroad lines is now being resurrected, at great expense, to take passengers rather than produce and chickens to the Bay Area. The rising costs mean that it will be quite expensive to take the train to the Larkspur Ferry with further expense incurred if one wanted to take the ferry to San Francisco. Until it officially begins to carry passengers at a date which keeps receding further into the future, the trains are running several times a day for 'testing'.

I just hope that this interesting historic area doesn't become a shopping mall full of generic shops.