Walnut Historical Society to Do Costco Book Signing

 

The newly re-started Walnut Historical Society might have met for the first time Thursday, but the group already has its first project in the works.
Priority one for the committee will be to compile photos and historical information for an “Images of America” book. The Arcadia Publishing book series uses photos with captions to tell a community’s story.
The committee’s initial meeting comes the day after the City Council voted 5-0 to enter into an agreement with Arcadia Publishing to produce the book on Walnut. Under the agreement, Arcadia will finance the project from editing to publicity to distribution. The city will receive an eight percent royalty of the net amounts received from sales of the book.
Thursday’s gathering included representatives from the Walnut Valley Unified and Rowland Unified school districts, local churches, the Walnut Valley Water District and Cal Poly, among others.
Mayor Antonio “Tony” Cartagena said one of his goals has been to re-establish the Walnut Historical Society as a way to document and preserve the city’s history.
“To know more about the city’s future, you need to know the history,” Cartagena said. “Our objective is to see the school district, religious institutions, the college, the university and people who have lived here for quite some time be a part of history.”
City Clerk Teresa De Dios said she has been working on a project to organize the city’s historical archives for a couple of years. The city has photographs, but needs help from the community with compiling the background information to go with them, De Dios said.
“We need the people who actually know the stories,” she said. “It is just so important to put the pieces together and to put them in chronological order.”
June Wentworth, a one-time Walnut mayor and the city’s resident historian, will serve as the Historical Society’s president. During the meeting, she shared with the group a slide show of photos of Walnut from the 1800s to present times.
The 45-year resident also shared stories about ranches that once stood where tract homes are today, early council meetings in a rundown, termite-infested house and open fields where her children hunted for lizards.
“There were 3,000 people in the city and cows, chickens and horses,” she said of when she moved to Walnut. “I’ve enjoyed seeing the city grow.”