Research Acknowledgement

The research done on each particular site for this historical tour began in May of 2022. This has been a labor of love for volunteers Wendi Hendershot, Bill Schroeder, Denise McBride, Ginger Gardner and Don Hendershot, who wanted to acknowledge our town’s past and the pioneers, businesses, and buildings that laid the foundation of what Dixon is today. They each spent countless hours of research to bring this project to fruition. This was not an easy task as there were no addresses in the early days and businesses moved locations frequently. Invaluable to their research were deeds, genealogy, wills, maps, directories, voter registrations, published histories and newspapers.

Dixon’s missing history was researched from microfilm for over 20 years by Alan Schmeiser and the late Hayward Melville, compiled on their website, “The Dixon Historical Guild”, until it expired in 2024. The volunteers above partnered with Mr. Schmeiser, to create a new site to restore the original research, to preserve the on-going research for each historic plaque site, adjacent historical sites without a plaque, as well as information on over 5000 pioneers and their descendants in the ancestry.com family tree they created throughout the last 3 years.

The historical information compiled for this tour would not have been possible without the foundational work of Schmeiser and Melville, the historians on Dixon’s 1968 Centennial Committee, or the Dixon Tribune “Brevities”, extracted from microfilm by Ardeth Sievers Reidel in the 1970’s. Photographs and information donated by the pioneer descendants of this area were collected by Schmeiser, Melville, Reidel and Schroeder and archived on the Solano County library site by Librarians Mary Jean Woodman and Shirley Parsons, and most Dixon Tribune newspapers are digitized and archived here as well...https://solanolibrary.com/hours-and-locations/dixon-library/dixon-archives/ .

We would like to acknowledge the ongoing research done and added by the past and current historians of the Dixon Historical Society to their website https://www.dixonhistoricalsociety.org, and in their museum, as well as the historians of the Dixon Women’s Improvement Club, that published the “Dixon Images of America” paperback in 2005.

Please visit www.dixonhistoricalguild.org often. As more information on our early pioneers and the historic sites of downtown is uncovered, it will be preserved there.

This publication is your reference for the self-guided tour of our historic downtown. The map for the tour can be found in the middle pages of the magazine, as well as on the new Dixon Historical Guild site.

Legal Disclosure:

This document has been prepared by those listed above. All the information contained herein provides historical information based on the best research and verification efforts of this group of researchers. They have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the historical research reflected in this document. However, all historical research is subject to inherent uncertainties and limitations. While the group believes the information contained herein is accurate, no warranties express or implied, are made as to this information. Users are always encouraged to independently verify any, and all, information contained in this document. This self-guided tour and document is the collaboration of The Dixon Historical Guild, The Dixon Chamber of Commerce, The Dixon Historical Society, The Downtown Dixon Business Association, and the City of Dixon. This Historical Plaque Committee reserves the right to update or modify this document at any time without notice.