The Centennial Heritage Museum in Santa Ana is facing economic hardship, but you'd never know it by the hundreds of schoolchildren who traipse through its late 19th century homes each week.
The 1898 Kellogg House, the 1899 Maag House, a nature center, a small orange grove and a picnic area make up the museum complex, sandwiched on 4 acres between industrial buildings on Harvard Street.
Inside the Kellogg House, moved to the site in 1980, time seems to have stood still. On the desk once used by Hiram Clay Kellogg, who was Orange County's first civil engineer, an Underwood typewriter seems as if it had been in use just a minute ago. His calling card rests nearby: "Kellogg Bros. Contractors for Vineyard Planning. Laying Out a Specialty. H.C. Kellogg. Deputy County Surveyor."
Indeed, Kellogg planned most of Santa Ana, including its railroads, sewers and roads. He also had a hand in planning some nearby communities.
On a recent day, second-graders from Philip J. Reilly Elementary School in Mission Viejo giggled as they discovered how he and others in that era lived.
The cellphone generation learned, among other things, how telephones were used before the advent of rotary dials and push buttons.
Standing before an antique telephone, docent Lauren Andrews explained that party lines, which allowed neighbors to hear one another's conversations, were the only way to communicate by phone.
"Would you want to tell your deepest secrets on this phone?" asked Andrews, who wore period clothing: a long skirt, high-necked blouse and black lace-up shoes.
The children walked from room to room, where they played with 100-year-old pick-up-sticks and heard the tin sound of the "Swanee" one-step on a Victrola. The children learned that records were like today's compact discs and that the pump organ, which Andrews demonstrated, sufficed as entertainment long before television video games.
They made butter with antique tools in the kitchen and picked oranges off the trees. Everyone, even the boys, donned corsets that women once wore to create their hourglass figures.
"The way they used to dress was cool," said Tiffany Andrews, 8. "I liked trying on the clothes because it was different."
Docent Adam England revels in teaching the children about history. "We take them back in time to when their grandparents lived," he said.
