Photograph by Scott Runde
Lou Spincich and Eusibio Aribus help install the stamp mill at Murphy Park.
By ANNE GELHAUS
After months of planning, fundraising and reconstruction, the volunteer committee charged with restoring a historic stamp mill finished the project on budget and ahead of schedule.
Committee members completed installation of the stamp mill at Murphy Park in March, a month earlier than they'd anticipated. The structure has been fenced in since then, pending the official dedication ceremonies scheduled for May 11.
Local residents and representatives of the marine division of Westinghouse Electric Corp. began meeting two years ago to find a place for the stamp mill, which was cast at Hendy Iron Works in 1918 and stood in an Amador County pine grove for nearly 80 years. The stamp mill was used to crush rocks to release bits of gold ore: It fell out of use in the early 1950s, and birds built nests in its massive timbers.
Last May, the Sunnyvale City Council gave the go-ahead to the committee to restore the structure and install it at Murphy Park. The city agreed to maintain the stamp mill once it was relocated to the park from the former Westinghouse complex, where it had lain in pieces behind Building 61.
Meanwhile, the Sunnyvale Historical Society mounted a fundraising campaign that netted about $5,000 for the project, as well as about $15,000 in donations of labor and materials. Moholovic Concrete laid the foundation for the mill, and Sunnyvale Lumber donated new timbers for the structure, which stands 20 feet tall and is made up of parts weighing three tons each.
"This is definitely a community effort," says society president Lillian Pang. "I call it a historical gift to the city."
Jack Perry, president of the Iron Man Museum at the old Westinghouse site, headed a crew of retired Westinghouse machinists that dismantled the stamp mill and cleaned the reusable metal parts before putting them back together.
"Some of them go back to the Hendy days," Perry says of his crew members.
Born in the forges at Hendy Iron Works three decades before Westinghouse took over the Hendy Avenue complex, the stamp mill traveled more than 100 miles to the property of Frederick W. Petersen near Pine Grove in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Naomi York, a member of the Iron Man Museum committee, spotted the mill on a vacation to the Mother Lode. She recognized the Hendy handiwork and began the process of returning the mill to its place of origin.
The museum purchased the mill from Eric Petersen, great-grandson of its original owner, for $700 in 1986.
A public dedication of the stamp mill is set for May 11 at 11:07 a.m. at Murphy Park, Washington and Sunnyvale avenues. The ceremony will be followed by a picnic lunch at 12:03 p.m., sponsored by the local chapter of E Clampus Vitus. The lunch costs $3 for adults and $1 for children 12 and younger.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 8, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.