Jacobs Receives Senior Historian Award

Susan Jacobs received PVHA’s first Senior Historian Award in August. Susan is our in-house historian, who inspires and educates the volunteers. Growing up in Watsonville, she remembers much of the town’s history. Volunteers and visitors constantly go to her when they...
Memories of the Telephone Company

Memories of the Telephone Company

By Alice Sams Montgomery, February 8, 2002 The late Alice Sams Montgomery wrote this story at the request of Jane Borg, Historian at PVHA. Alice was a PVHA volunteer who was a telephone operator in 1955 at Pacific Bell in Watsonville. In 1955, I married a Hartnell...
Christmas Displays

Christmas Displays

Displays are changed every three months thanks to Jodi Frensley and Virginia Avila and other volunteers. If you plan to come, be sure to check our holiday hours. Call or email for more information. Stunning Holiday Clothing Display: The Bockius-Orr house will be...
Apple Annual

Apple Annual

By Elijah Ezeji-Okoye For a short time in Watsonville’s earlier history, autumn was marked by the coming of the Apple Annual.  In the early 1900s, the city’s apple industry burgeoned, with new orchards, packinghouses, and shipping centers cropping up across the...
Peter Hauer Family and the Hauer Apple History

Peter Hauer Family and the Hauer Apple History

By Claire Etienne (Peter Hauer’s great niece and daughter of Muriel Hauer Etienne) Peter Hauer created the Hauer apple around 1900 in Pleasant Valley, near Watsonville. The Hauer apple is an “antique apple.” It is one of only two varieties said to have originated in...