On August 27, 2000, the 1,000-piece collection of Piru’s Lechler Museum, a private trove of Santa Clara River Valley artifacts assembled by local historian Harry H. Lechler, went to auction, scattering decades of community history.

A descendant of pioneer George Washington Lechler, Harry established his private museum in his backyard in 1943, before relocating it to a building on Piru’s Main Street in 1969.

Inside, Lechler gathered a vast collection of artifacts spanning the Santa Clara River Valley’s upper and lower reaches,  from Chumash baskets and pioneer relics to stained-glass windows from Piru’s first Catholic church, a hotel register signed by Hollywood stars, and even oddities like an albino deer mount.

By the summer of 2000, however, age and health took their toll. At 88, after suffering a heart attack and losing his son, Lechler and his wife Peggie made the difficult decision to liquidate the museum’s holdings. On August 27, 2000, the first of some 1,000 pieces went under the gavel at California Auctioneers in Casitas Springs.

The Los Angeles Times reported that local historians and the Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board scrambled in a last-minute effort to keep Piru’s history intact, urging residents and museums to pool their resources to buy back what they could.

“It takes years for museums to acquire these kinds of artifacts,” warned Heritage Board chair Gary Blum. “To have them auctioned off in one afternoon would be a tragedy.”

The sale, estimated at more than $100,000 in value, drew nationwide interest. Among the most coveted items were the stained-glass windows, Victrolas, and vintage farm equipment. But locals worried more about the intimate touches — Indian tools, woven baskets made from the reed said to inspire the name “Piru,” the hand-crank telephone that thrilled generations of visiting schoolchildren, and the guest register from the Piru Hotel, where Lechler himself was born.

For some, the auction was bittersweet.

“Mr. Lechler did exactly what he felt he had to do,” said Steve Alcocer of the Piru Neighborhood Council, noting Harry had never charged admission to his museum.

Others, like Tony Newhall of the nearby Piru Mansion, lamented the scattering of what was widely regarded as the finest collection of Piru history.

That sense of loss was poignantly captured in a Ventura County Star commentary by Steven R. Tabarez of Oxnard, who had first visited the museum in 1992.

He remembered Lechler as a “great man with a great vision” who opened his heart, humor, and knowledge to strangers.

Tabarez recalled his son’s delight with Lechler’s practical jokes and novelties, from the “earthquake in a can” to the hand-crank phone.

“Not only was your museum a ‘little place with a whole lot of history,’ but you were a great man in a time when great men were, and are, scarce,” Tabarez wrote.

The museum’s structure on Main Street still stands, but its once-priceless collection is now dispersed, “scattered to the four winds.”

To read yesterday’s Today in History, click here.

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