Seabolts' Cabin 27, the Former Keddie USPS Office

[dmac]

There isn't much known about Cabin 27, where the Seabolts lived, which was mere feet from Cabin 28. My estimation is now roughly 5-7 feet apart at the closest point, at the rear of the cabins. No real good photos of 27 currently exist, but I was able to do these screen grabs from old news footage:

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Much like 28, 27 began as a small cabin and was eventually expanded, mostly with additions to the back of the structure. That is, in fact, why they come so close to touching each other- the odd angle (roughly 7 degrees) at which they lie against each other was enough to close the gap between the cabins when the rear addition was made to 27, and the rear addition was made to 28. When 28's main addition was built, it nearly matched the design of the original cabin and included the kitchen, bathroom, girls bedroom, rear deck, rear stairs, and basement (including the laundry area and Johnny's bedroom). However, the additions to 27 seem to have occurred at a different time, as they are comparatively haphazard, and don't at all match the design of the original cabin.

And what was that cabin? Well, I do not believe the original cabin was this big, as it appears to have been added to and redesigned to suit the purpose, but it appears 27 was a longstanding center of the community- It once housed the post office, with the cabin large enough for the Postmaster to be a full-time, live-in member of the community:

fghsdfh.png

From the c.1995 article about the condemnation of the majority of buildings in Keddie, here is a shot of a building very similar in size and design to 27, but it isn't. Nor does it resemble the General Store. But is shows clear evidence of additions and lackadaisical tack-ons that peppered the community, adding an essence of shoddiness that permeates the town today. What is odd is the display case seen in the open front room, and apparent wall display racks built into the wall behind. What other retail places were in Keddie? What building is this??!

store.png

Flop the image and steal a bunch of stuff off the building to patch up other leaking cabins- including the wood panel facade- and it could easily be 27, but is it?

EDIT> After flopping the image and superimposing it over the others, the design and size match as seamlessly as can be expected, given the differences in POV and angle. I'm suitably convinced it may be 27, but can anyone confirm it? I've long assumed 27, 28, and possibly other cabins were all torn down at the same time. Any info? Butterfly?

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[BUTTERFLYVALLEY1]

I was the Postmaster who worked there from 1961 to 1964. DMAC the front section you see as you head down the path was the entire post office. I used to have to close the service window and lock the office door to run to the hotel to use the restroom. I has a small radio that I used in my office for entertainment. I was first to take the very large detaied book of all post offices in the United States and put zip codes beside the places as people did come in an inquire. One Postal Inspector came in (their visits were always hush hush and unexpected) and ask me what I was doing. I showed him and he thought it was a marvelous idea. ha ha Anyway, as you can tell, it was a tiny room and the lobby area was separated by the row of post office boxes and window to my area (locked when I was not present) and, of course, the entry door to my area. Very small but happy place at that time. You once again brought back some wonderful memories for me.

[BUTTERFLYVALLEY1]

A very sweet mother and her daughter and son lived in the cabin proper. There was a locked door behind my two file cabinets after I rearranged the room to suit me. That door led into the daughter's bedroom. I knew Dottie, the mother, as she was the cook at the Keddie restaurant. Best cook ever. Like I said I had to totally lock up the post office including my old Wells Fargo safe before I went to the hotel/restaurant to use the ladies room. I can tell you that little room was cold in the wintertime. I had an electric heater I used which I kept trained towards my desk. I worked there when President Kennedy was killed. I had gone down to use the ladies room and there was a tv in the lobby and it was all about the assassination. I went back to the post office as I knew there must be something I needed to do after a President was murdered. Sure enough it even told me how to lower the flag properly and I had to do the procedure twice each day when putting it out and bringing it into the office. Mr. Redstreake, the Postmaster of the Quincy Post Office came down about an hour after I had read the manuel to tell me what I had to do and the days I would be closed. He was so sweet. He said, I should have known you would have thought to look in the manuel, etc. and do what was necessary. It was nice to hear. Being so young and fresh out of high school, I seemed to have a sixth sense about covering a Federal office all by myself. Remember, dmac, I had no phone.

[BUTTERFLYVALLEY1]

Sorry, dmac, of course I had been in that cabin once or twice. It was very small and cramped like most places in Keddie. They were built for necessity and utilized thusly. It was just a really close family community during the 50s and 60s and a truly wonderful and carefree place to raise kids. Doors were not locked, even your car was safe when left open with the windows open. Keddie was safe, very safe. It was mainly railroad families, the dorm was then rooms for railroaders who would lay over until they were called to take a train somewhere from Keddie. If they didn't and deadheaded back, they did not make the money. Like I said, very much a railroad town. It all changed rapidly when English bought Keddie and started revamping the whole area for the tourists he expected to come from Los Angeles, etc. Of course, Feather River College really brought in a very different element to Quincy and the little towns, like Keddie, and we were blindsided. All of a sudden things slowly went downhill. It is sad.

I must tell you that I so appreciate your pictures you have taken and so kindly posted on the site here. It is really heart rendering looking at the lovely area that has been so destroyed. I am glad I lived there when I did. Hope this helped.

[BUTTERFLYVALLEY1]

People had post office boxes from which they would pick up their mail. The dorm was not a dorm then, it was rooms that railroad men or people working nearby rented. If you did not have a post office box, you got your mail from general delivery. The roads did not have names then. The main road through Keddie and down to the swimming hole was just the main road, where it forked you went up the road to the railroad depot, you went around behind the lodge by taking the road behind the lodge, or down from the lodge it was the road to the back cabins. That is what I have been trying to say, we did not have fancy buildings or log fronted cabins until English came in a brought "prosperty" to this lovely hick town. He tried to make it a resort to attract the Los Angeles crowd for get-aways, etc. It never worked...all the work and expense for nothing. There were more people coming to Keddie for summers, or fishing trips, or hunting trips, or to buy land and build homes before it was modernized. I kid you not.

I love your map, dmac, but the Keddie swimming hole was actually to the Keddie side of the swinging bridge before the rapids, and the pond that English put in was not even there until he put it there. In fact, when he first put it in it had huge gold fish and a japenese bridge you could walk over or use to take pictures on or even a wedding once, I believe. We were not fancy but we were originally sound. There were good hard-working people in that little town and surrounding areas. They worked on the railroad as it was a regular station there and they went to work and then came back to that point, there were people who worked for P.G. & E, people worked in Quincy but did not want to live in a big town so they lived in Keddie, they logged in the area and lived there, etc. All the kids in the area rode the school bus that went clear down Highway 70 to the Butte County line. In fact it ended and was parked there and the next morning picked up kids all along the route into Quincy. We could hardly wait to get our licenses so we could take ourselves to school. We were a very tight group. Until we drove, we did not take jobs in Quincy as it was too far to go back and forth to work there and especially at night when the theater ran. Instead of hitch-hiking back then, someone would take you into town if they were going and bring you back. Sometimes they just did it out of the goodness of their hearts. We would have gotten into severe trouble were we to hitch-hike. Kids were, perhaps unconsciously, kept more track of then than they were in the 80s or especially today. I prefer the old days. There was never a time when I did not know where my daughter was, nor my grandgirls in the 80s and 90s, nor my great-grand children when I am around. It just isn't something I am comfortable with even now.

Once again, I got carried away and took you on another trip down nostalga lane.

[dmac]

Here are four old shots of the pond. The first two are from the 70s, heading northeast into Keddie after turning off of 70/89. In the distance is the pond and the arched footbridge over it, and off-frame to the right is the turn towards the main bridge spanning the creek. After having been there, my guess is the footbridge over the pond was nearly in line with the car bridge- as in, by standing on one bridge, you'd be looking nearly straight onto the other. The big log resort sign is on the left, and the dirt road to the left of it heads back to where the stairwell was that led up the incline to cross 70 to the gas station. The road continued on to the left (northwest) of the pond and down to the flat area where the three old cabins were.

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These last shots are much older, taken when the pond wasn't derelict. Even the kitschy paddle wheel is still in place. In these shots, the camera is again pointed northeast:

110423_467_Plumas_Museum.png

I have a couple dozen old photos of the lodge/hotel that was rebuilt after the first was destroyed by fire in the 30s, but none of them show it without the log facade- even the shots taken before the dorm was built. Cabins 1 and 2 seem to have been the "showstopper" cabins meant to attract oohs and ahhs from the clients that never came.

As for the "main road" you speak of to the pool, what you seem to be saying confirms my thoughts- The main road crossed came off the 70, crossed the bridge, running between the lodge and dorm, and up to the post office (27), where it curved left and down east, curving back on itself and down the hill to the flats. At the bottom of the hill, first chance you got, you'd pull over, park, and run east to the swimming hole. As it's always been private property with a post office, there never was need for road names- English added two names, thereby bisecting the old Main Road: the optimistically named Keddie Resort Road (from the 70 to the turn in front of the post office/27), where it became Spanish Oaks Lane, turning east then back on itself, down to Keddie Flats.

Back to the Post Offices: I understand it was first handled at the original lodge, then the old general store. When they burned, it was moved to 27, then back to the rebuilt General Store, and finally to the red trailer north of the dorm, across the street from cabin 13. When that went south, I believe mailboxes were attached to the front of the old General Store, and now it's one of those ugly key-lock boxes, next to the phone booth by the deserted lodge.

The PO system, when you were there, Butterfly: were PO box rentals assigned according to the cabin # they rented? So, for instance, Joe Schmoe lived in cabin 16, so his PO address would have been

Joe Schmoe
PO 13
Keddie, CA

Then, when John Doe-Eye moved into 13, if he rented a PO box he would get PO 13, too? I know, it may seem like nonsensical minutiae to most, but it would shed light on a lot of things for me.

And, just for fun, here's an old ditto-machined price list for the resort in 1961. The prices were the same for monthly rentals in 1981 when the crime occurred, and Vickie recently commented that the rates were pretty much the same until the new owners took over and tripled them- two years ago?!

110423_447_Plumas_Museum.jpg

[quincygirl]

This might not be what you are looking for but until about 20 years ago, if you did not know someone's address in Greenville, Quincy, Taylorsville etc (I'm sure, Keddie included) you could simply write the person's name on the envelope, address it to General Delivery and the person would get it. I didn't work for the post office but I sent many letters this way when I lived there. As far as street names, it was pretty common to refer to streets by the people who lived on them rather than the real street name. There are many streets I still refer to by someones last name or the name of a landlord..so and so's apartments, etc. 1981 was still a pretty innocent time for Plumas county. We all kept our doors unlocked and never locked our cars, there was never a reason to. The photos are great by the way. I had a dream as a kid I wanted to get married on the arch bridge.

Quincy Girl

[BUTTERFLYVALLEY1]

DMAC, I hope this helps. We actually had "ugly" post office boxes back in 1961 which you opened by combination. ha ha The box numbers were unrelated to the place the person lived. They were rented by a person as they become available. There were two or three large post office boxes on the bottome row for the people to rent such as English when he came to town and had large delieveries of mail, ie 8 1/2 by 11. Most received letters and catalogues and they would fit in the normal size boxes. They were rented by the month and many of the old timers had them for years. It eventually went to keys and you received one or two when you rented it for individual or family. There were 3 different sizes and they cost respecitvely. The Post Office set the prices. I did own the old Wells Fargo safe and my mother took over the post office when I went on to school a few years later. She ran it for four years. No, I did not give her the job. I suggested she take the Federal test for post master when I decided to leave for school and she did. My mother just passed away on May 9 of this year. We had many friends in the area and still have some there. You were close to people then as you not only lived in the area, or worked in the area, you also went to school in the area, married people from the area many times. My first husband lived in Keddie, my second husband lived in Quincy but was born in Westwood. It was not at all that unusual. Sometimes you stayed in the area for your entire life and sometimes you moved away and came back or you moved away and never came back. I still have that area in my heart and would live there if I could. The homesickness never goes away. That is another reason why I just absolutely love your pictures so very much.

By the way, the bridge over the pond ran the same way as the Keddie bridge but it was not next to it. That little cutout where you could pull off the road, it also placed you into a position where you could park pretty close to the pond bridge. In fact, there was plenty room to park several cars. I believe there was a couple of picnic tables in that area were you so inclined.

There was always something to do in Keddie. I never remember anyone saying they were bored or there was nothing to do. You could always do your chores and that definitely kept you busy. Just walking in the woods was wonderful. We experienced freedom that cannot be allowed in big cities. It was like a glitch in time where all good things about growing up all hung there just for us to enjoy. It is unforgetable, thank God. How often have you heard, when you were a kid did you ride a horse to school; or did they have movies back in the time when you were a kid; or how far did you have to walk to get to school; or did you really milk goats and feed chickens, ducks, and geese when you were young? I hear these kind of things all the time now that I am 68 with gray hair and blessed with memories I can tell my great grandchildren that seem to fasciante them. ha ha It is a blessed thing to have such memories. Once again, I have gotten carried away...

[krazykat]

I was looking at the ariel photo's of cabin 26 to see how many cars where there as you,(dmac), suggested. But in scrolling around I saw this.


Evidently back behind Cabin 27 there was a large pile of 55 or so gallon drums? Yellow drums would indicate some kind of solvent wouldn't it? Anyway I just wondered if anyone else thought that was odd. Or am I wrong and that's something else there?

[dmac]

KK- that's actually a woodpile. Mr. Seabolt was a 'handyman' around Keddie (in fact, he apparently replaced the walls in 28 after the murders), and he also collected a lot of firewood for himself. They aren't drums, just pine stumps and logs waiting to be split.

KK- more of the reply, re: the cars in Keddie, is found here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=610&p=7801#p7801

[krazykat]

Thanks dmac, the picture makes sense now. I was worried for a minute I might have to revise my own pet theory.

[krazykat]

I do watch too many hammer films and have gotten way to invovled in researching murders. I should probably take up Golf and stop visiting crime scenes and pouring over old photo's.

That aside I can't imagine living next door to 28 or replacing the walls. That had to just be creepy. No wonder his wife or daughter sat by 70 above the Wye for years waving at cars going by with one hand and a watchman in the other.

[Ausgirl]

I thought Seavey was the creepy caretaker?

Was 'Chester the Molester", legendary window peeper, actually Jim Seabolt?

[Chichibcc]

At this point, I don't really think so-if Mr. Seabolt was really that "creepy," I'm sure Sheila and Tina would not have spent as much time at the Seabolt home as they did (and from what Sheila said in her interview in part one,it sounded as if she and Tina were over there pretty often).

Kat-I agree-refurbishing the inside of C28 would certainly had not been a job I would've been comfortable with taking, no matter how much money was offered, and knowing how cheap the owner was, I'm sure the amount Mr. Seabolt received for all that work probably wasn't very much, anyway.

I still can't get over the fact that the owner was okay with allowing C28 to be occupied by families again after such a brutal crime. Had I been the owner, that would've been a definite no-no. As important as making money is, I would've had to really draw the line there.

As soon as LE had finished taking whatever evidence they wanted out of there, I would've had the cabin bulldozed right after, but that's just me.

[Chichibcc]

Another exterior shot of C27, prior to being torn down:

C27.JPG

Source:http://ghostsandghouls.org/PAGE4.HTML

[dmac]

I've long assumed 27, 28, and possibly other cabins were all torn down at the same time. Any info? Butterfly?

I'm pretty sure I've posted this elsewhere, but it bears mention in this thread. Cabin 27 and 28, and most likely 16-24, were all torn down at the same time. This photo clearly shows 27 being torn down, while 28 is still standing, just off to the left. Yet Josh still claims it's a photo of 28 being destroyed, with garbage captions on his Facebook page like, "Was it mere coincidence that Cabin 28 was torn down when it was (near the end of the first documentary), or was someone trying to send a message?"

http://keddie28.com/gal/Crime%20Scene/2 ... s/28d.html

Yeah, Josh's message is loud and clear: he will lie about anything to try to sell his lame products. To him, the case is all about spiders and spooky stories and seances and Ouija boards and blood money.

[dmac]

bump my last post on this thread, re: Josh Hand Cock. I think Doug Thomas just read it, too.