by Lisa Robinson
Tucked behind the current Sew Rose building on the corner of Highway 9 and Mill Street in Ben Lomond is a little cottage. In 1940, Willoughby A. Beede, a mining engineer, owned both the cottage and the Sew Rose building, which housed the Ben Lomond telephone exchange. He and his wife Elizabeth, who was the manager of the Ben Lomond telephone exchange, which was located in what is now the bright pink “Sew Rose” building, opened a small museum in the cottage. The Beedes wanted to be able to show the public their “fine collection of Indian relics, and trophies gathered from all parts of the world.” The collection had been gathered from Western Canada to Mexico City and the Pacific to the Great Lakes. Two pottery pieces were reputed to be 2000 years old.
The collection included Native American baskets from fifteen different tribes. All old and representing the “excellent craft[wo]manship” of the various tribes. Author and historian Geoffrey Dunn, who was a young boy when the museum closed down, recalls, “… being very overwhelmed by the beauty of all the baskets, the place seemed magical to me…”
In addition to the museum, the building also housed a souvenir shop and lapidary, since as a mining engineer working in “many parts of the world,” Beede had collected copious amounts of wonderful rocks and gems.
Beede, who had come to California around 1928, co-owned “Ye Old Book Shop” on Pacific Avenue before moving to Ben Lomond. In 1904, while employed as an engineer for the Standard Oil Company, he went to Alberta to work with the Sarcee tribe, now known as the Tsuu T’ina Nation. The wife of the chief of the dance had had an accident and could not move, a government doctor had deduced that she had broken her back. Beede, who had studied first aid, was urged by her husband to examine his wife. He determined that her hip had been dislocated and was able to put it back into place. So, pleased with the outcome, the chief made him blood brother in a wrist-slicing ceremony.
Stop by the San Lorenzo Valley Museum over the next few weeks to see “Cabinet of Curiosities” an exhibition of the strange, weird, unusual, fantastic, and fun objects collected by local residents in their life’s adventures.