UPPER LAKE — Two years after a major shift in leadership, the Bachelor Valley Grange Hall in Upper Lake is facing financial troubles that, if unmitigated, could lead to the closure of Lake County’s last officially registered grange, said its president.
“We’ve been working our butts off to get it to where it needs to be,” Bachelor Valley Grange President Ashley Dooley said this week of the hall, a 100-person capacity meeting space and community center located on Government Street near downtown Upper Lake.
But the 1938 building is in need of a slew of repairs, including fixing widespread termite damage, that have been priced out at almost $9,000. Without the funding for those repairs, Dooley said, the grange hall may need to close its doors within the next three or four months.
Dooley said the grange doesn’t have the funds to get that work done, and feels she is running out of opportunities to pull the organization back on its feet financially.
“We’re hoping to get more support from the community because the more support we have, the more we get to give back,” she said.
Dooley became president of the grange in 2017 when several of its leading members decided to step down from their positions. Joining Dooley in filling the positions were Vice President Mindy Witter and Treasurer Tanya Noble. Secretary Pamela Lucas stayed on.
At the time, an article in this newspaper noted the grange had been losing members and funding prior to the change in leadership, and was considering closure. But with Dooley and the others taking over, things picked up. The grange began holding new kinds of regular events like movie screenings and food bank days.
Since then, Dooley said she and the other members have been raising money for small repairs and maintenance on the hall, like paint, that were within the range of things they could afford. Even an unexpected cost of $2,000 to replace the grange’s front doors was floated via donations from the community.
But the laundry list of repairs the old hall needs, coupled with the now-discovered termite damage, has Dooley worried. “We’re trying to keep this open so that we have another option in town,” she said. “It’s been such a longstanding organization in Lake County that we would hate to see it go.”
The Granger movement, formed after the American Civil War by a Minnesota farmer named Oliver Hudson Kelley who saw it as a way to mutually strengthen often isolated agricultural communities, led to the establishment of grange societies across the U.S. In years gone by, there were at least four separate granges in Lake County, and editions of this newspaper from the mid-20th century reveal near-daily articles relating to one or another event at grange halls in Upper Lake, Finley, Lower Lake and Clearlake Oaks.
But the predominance of the grange hall as a community center has dwindled. According to the Seattle Times, between 1992 and 2007, grange membership fell by 40 percent.
“We just need to rally together and keep the ball rolling forward,” Dooley urged. “The great thing about this community is in time of need, everybody steps up.” She said she is “optimistic that we’re going to make it through this.”
Dooley added that if the grange can rain enough money to fund the major repairs its hall needs now, its renewed and active membership will likely be able to sustain the organization for a long time to come.
“If we can overcome this mountain,” said Dooley, “then it’s a valley on the other side.”
A former grange hall in Finley, now called the Big Valley Hall, is currently unassociated with state and national granges but is still in operation.
Big Valley Hall Treasurer Joan Taylor noted that Bachelor Valley’s troubles are not out of the norm, given the trajectory of granges in recent years. “We’re not making much money either,” she said. Building maintenance is “an ongoing problem,” she added, “because the buildings are old…You’re sort of caught between and betwixt.”
