User:Mangoe/Tidball Store

The Tidball Store is one of the few surviving structures in the ghost town of Jolon, California. Originally constructed in 1868 as a waypoint for a stage line, it was expanded into a hotel and eventually converted into a retail store. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 1976.

History
The building has its origins in an adobe way station built in Jolon for the Flint and Bixby stage lines in 1868, when the town was an important point on El Camino Real. The nearby Dutton Hotel was operated in the 1870s by a partnership of George Button and Thomas Tidball, both ex military men, but after a falling-out in 1878, Tidball started his own rival hotel, retaining one wall of the old adobe building and erecting around it a two story redwood frame house. This building was eventually completed to its present form in 1890, though there have been changes relocating doorways, staircases, and some interior walls as the functions of the building changed over the years. In addition to serving as a hotel, Tidball operated a store in the building, and at times it also housed the town post office. Eventually only the store remained, along with housing for the proprietor on the second floor.

By this time Jolon itself had largely disappeared, having been bypassed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1880s and the highway (later US Route 101) in 1910; most of the town burned down in 1929. Meanwhile, in 1923 William Randolph Hearst had purchased the land on which the town (including the store) stood. This land later became the basis for Fort Hunter Liggett in 1941. The store continued to be occupied as a private residence until at least the 1970s. In 2015 the army transferred a 2.5 acre parcel surrounding the store to Monterey County, which now maintains the building.

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