Latest news with #FreedomElementarySchool
Los Angeles Times
03-06-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
A California town called Freedom has a wild past as ‘Whiskey Hill'
FREEDOM, Calif. — I was driving home from a reporting trip to Santa Cruz County on Friday when I spotted the plain green and white highway sign, just off Highway 1. It had an arrow pointing north alongside the word FREEDOM. Jackpot! I slowed my aging Jeep, to the annoyance of the pickup driver behind me, just enough to take a not-great cellphone photo out my window before making my way home to the South Bay. As I wrote last week in this newsletter, I am willing to travel out of my way to report from a town with an interesting name. I had stopped in Freedom — a census-designated place with some 3,000 residents in southern Santa Cruz County — to do just that. The morning the newsletter on datelines landed, I awoke to a text from my colleague, friend and fellow California history nerd Gustavo Arellano: 'Whither Weed???' Meaning Weed, population 2,500, in Siskiyou County. I've been to Weed several times. I've even bought a few 'I [Heart] Weed' stoner-humor knickknacks for friends. Alas, I have never reported a story from there, I confessed to Gustavo. 'REVEAL YOUR SHAME!' he texted back. Challenge accepted. Here are a few colorfully named California places I have visited but from which I have not (yet!) earned a dateline: Rough and Ready in Nevada County; Likely in Modoc County; Butt Valley in Plumas County; Hayfork in Trinity County. And, yes, Weed. Though, I have earned datelines from Blackwell's Corner, Cool, Peanut, Weedpatch and Volcano. The unincorporated community blends right in with the adjacent, incorporated city of Watsonville. Looking for proof of Freedom, I found: Freedom Elementary School and the Freedom Branch Library. I also found an easy-to-miss metal plaque on an exterior wall of the Wooden Nickel Bar & Grill (which is on Freedom Boulevard but not technically in Freedom). The plaque recognizes the town's wild past as a place called Whiskey Hill, 'a tiny village where violence, hangings, drinking, and bull and bear fights were a part of daily life.' 'As the town became more civilized, the name was changed to freedom,' reads the sign, hung in 1982 by members of the Order of E Clampus Vitus, a fraternal organization that celebrates obscure local history. Georg Romero, a historian for the Watsonville-based Pajaro Valley Historical Assn. and a retired library director for Cabrillo College, was kind enough to dig into the archives and send me a few old newspaper articles describing how Whiskey Hill, then Freedom, came to be. In the 1860s, the hamlet of Whiskey Hill consisted of 'a dozen shacks, each of which contained a bar and dispensed firewater,' according to a July 1937 article in the Watsonville Leader newspaper. At one rowdy gathering, the newspaper claimed, 'a man was shot through the head, the bullet going in one temple and out the other. A serape was thrown over him and he was left to expire in a corner while the dance and merry-making went on.' The town also was known for its vicious bear and bull fights hosted for spectators who paid $1 for a seat in the shade and 50 cents for a spot in the sun. According to a 2007 column in the Register-Pajaronian newspaper by the late local historian Betty Lewis, a bear would be 'chained to a post in the middle of the arena, and an angry bull was let loose.' As the animals fought, brass bands played and clowns entertained. Ultimately, Whiskey Hill sobered up. In the summer of 1877, Lewis wrote, a small group of residents met at a local schoolhouse and decided upon a more respectable town name: Freedom. Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Robert Gauthier at ACA Groves farm, where a farmer is fighting to save the iconic California avocado. Hailey Branson-Potts, staff writerKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Mercy Health donates to Lima schools meal program
Feb. 5—LIMA — Mercy Health presented a $50,000 donation to Lima schools at Wednesday's mayoral press briefing to go toward a weekend meal box for students to ensure have food over the weekend. Lima superintendent Jill Ackerman said students will be able to walk out of school with six pre-packaged, ready-made nutritious meals every Friday at Freedom Elementary School. "'Nutritious' was a key word for us," Ackerman said. "It's a peace of mind for us to know they will be fed over the weekend, and it's a relief for parents with rising food costs. It's also a peace of mind for the children to know when they're home, they're going to have some food that helps them stay healthy, and hopefully, it helps keep them on track with their grades and attendance." Tyler Smith, Mercy Health's director of community health, said the donation, which will go through a program run by the Children's Hunger Alliance, is important to address one of the biggest needs the healthcare provider sees in patients all the time, food insecurity. "It's mirroring what we're seeing within the hospital, and we know it's trickling out within the community," he said. "So we're thankful to have good partners like CHA and Lima schools. We've been pretty successful with the program we started in Leipsic a few years ago, and we know that the need was pretty drastic here in Lima." The CHA is a statewide non-profit that works to ensure food-insecure children get meals and started the same program with Mercy Health at Leipsic Elementary School in December 2022. "In the past year, over half a million kids in Ohio go to bed food insecure, which means they don't know where their next meal is going to come from," CHA regional director Jamie Harter said. "During the school year, a food insecure child can get three meals each of those five days they are in school every week, but they might not see food when the weekend hits." Mercy Health said more than 18,000 meals have been distributed to students at Leipsic Elementary, where the CHA offers meal boxes two weeks every month. Meal boxes come from a vendor in Bucyrus and will number at 1,440 meals per weekend. The program started October 2021 at Moler Elementary School in Columbus. For more information on the CHA, visit Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399. Featured Local Savings
