ep. 3 Preston Castle - Ancient home to Queen Calafia?
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Once upon a time…
In the magical land of California, there once was a queen named Calafia who ruled over the land. Calafia was a mighty queen ruling with an army of griffins and when in battle wore armor of fish bones likely salmon bones from the American river. Gold was everywhere in the land and Calafia was adorned by it on all accounts. California at this time was an all-female land of warriors and Calafia one day got word of a battle looming in Constantinople between the Muslims and the Christians. Calafia was to fight the Christians with the Muslims unfortunately the griffins, though fierce beasts who ought to have been a great asset in battle had been poorly trained in who the enemy was and killed both sides in battle. Calafia called the griffins off the battlefield.
Calafia found herself not long after this in hand-to-hand combat with a Christian king named Esplanian. The queen is defeated and taken captive where she converted to Christianity and fell in love with her captors’ cousin. Seeing as she was no longer a threat she was released. The queen and her new husband then returned with their army back to California where they decided to build themselves a proper castle, by the time they had finished the castle they had an heir, a son named Preston. As years went on the castle soon became forgotten, a legend really. Standing up in the modern-day land of Ione, California. Preston Castle.
Now of course I'm joking. But the Calafia story was part of a real novel written in 1510 called Las sergas de Esplandián.
Here’s the real story of that castle over in Ione, California.
State Senator Edward Meyers Preston proposed the idea in 1889 to create a reform school in Folsom. the idea was too well, reform bad boys instead of simply imprisoning them. Eventually, the location got changed to Ione which is about 45 minutes East of Sacramento.
Finally, in 1894 The Preston School of Industry was opened.
This place was built to look like a cool place rather than a prison which is really what it was. The state bought the land from the Ione Coal and Iron company for 30 bucks an acre and got a free 100 acres too. The original plans showed 77 rooms and 5 floors.
The first floor has the reception, this is where new wards (prisoners) would come in to be examined and processed. Also on this floor would be the director’s room, a general office, the doctor’s office the pharmacy, the dining room, and a few more offices.
Then we go up to the 2nd floor. Here we have the library, 12 apartments, the schoolroom, a reading room, the men’s water closet, and the women's bathroom.
Then we have the mezzanine, which had 2 bathrooms and some tubs.
The 3rd and 4th floors were unfinished. The 3rd had 12 rooms and the 4th had 6.
Down in the basement was the playroom, the laundry, more showers and bathrooms, a kitchen, pantry, fuel storage, and furnace room
The castle had a dumbwaiter and a Pelton wheel for the electricity.
Another cool piece to the castle is the fire escape which is a spiral slide with entries on each floor and up top is a lever that the wheel pulled would let out a rush of water for a quick and fun ride down to escape in case of a fire.
Up at the peak of Preston, the school had 1000 acres, and 750 was a farm. It had 800 wards, 200 employees, and a total of 50 buildings. The castle was just one of the 50 buildings.
Now, life at the school was okay at first but there was a period of time when whippings of boys, beatings, and other basic abuse in a prison happened. Many times boys would be sent here even when they weren’t all that bad simply because it would be easier on the family to get rid of a mouth that needed to be fed during the great depression. However many kids were murderers, drug dealers, bank robbers, and so on.
In the school program by 1922 were 28 different industries they trained these boys in so that they could have trade skills that could help them get jobs.
In fact, there were some job placement programs as well like Stanford University. the best kids would be sent there to work on the ranch and do all kinds of ranch work, being paid between $2.50 and $4 a day, and when they got parole these boys could lease between 10 and 20 acres for themselves.
Death was not uncommon, quite a few boys died there, supposedly from disease. Not all deaths were from disease. In fact, there’s a cold case regarding the head housekeeper named Anna Corbin.
She was found beaten beyond recognition and wrapped up in a rug and also had a rope around her neck. Like I said, it's a cold case but the most common story is that anna accidentally walked in on a guy named Eugene Monroe who happened to be a murderer. Sodomizing with another boy in the school. The story goes that he was afraid she would reveal his secret and so he killed her.
Eventually, in 1960 the school built new buildings and abandoned the castle, when they abandoned it the employees were allowed to loot the place so things like the marble flooring and the hand-carved mantelpieces were taken.
Take a peak inside
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