Dublin Heritage Park and Museums

Dublin Heritage Park and Museums is a ten-acre park located in the crook of the Interstate 580 freeway as it swings around from the valley floor to make the grade through the pass heading west toward the East Bay. It is a gem of a place to spend an hour or two if you're in Dublin, California, and want to be transported back in time a hundred years or so. The location was  the original "downtown Dublin" for the surrounding homesteads. As Dublin transformed from farmland to a modern town, a few forward-looking folks sought to preserve a little of its dairy farming history.

Dublin Heritage Park and Museums

The old St. Raymond Church (built in 1859) and the Dublin Pioneer Cemetery (established in 1859) are in their original locations. The Murray Schoolhouse, Kolb House, and associated barns were moved from across the freeway as the original farms were carved up for development projects. A small stream and forest insulates Heritage Park from the freeway, and the grounds are landscaped with plants you might see in the early 1900s, like hollyhocks and rambling roses. Across the street is the Challenge Dairy headquarters, and the original Green general store building.

The schoolhouse has wonderful exhibits for kids (and grownups) showing what it was like to attend school in a one-room schoolhouse, and to live and work on a dairy farm. The headstones in the cemetery provide a glimpse into pioneer life, and the church is a testament to early settlers who pitched in to build the center of spiritual and community life. I especially enjoyed our personal tour of the Kolb House, built in the Craftsman Bungalow style that was becoming popular at the turn of the twentieth century. I recommend visiting the Dublin Heritage Park and Museums, and checking out the photographs at the Online California Archive, the Dublin Heritage Museum collection.