This area was developed for the Midwinter Fair’s Grand Court of Honor. The grounds were sculpted from sand dunes by men using horse-drawn sleds.
The fountain, dedicated in 1924, was made possible with a $10,000 gift from Corrine Rideout. Corrine Rideout was the widow of Norman Rideout, who died in a mining accident in 1896. Mr. Rideout’s father, also Norman, came from Maine to Oroville, California and opened a bank. He successfully opened five more in the central valley of California. After his death in 1907 the banks were sold to A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of Italy later to become the Bank of America. The family surmises that the money to pay for the fountain may have come from the sale of these banks. The Rideouts have given quite a bit to California.
The cast stone pool was designed by architect Herbert A. Schmidt. The statue is by M. Earl Cummings. The original intention was for the statue to be of bronze, but the budget did not allow it.
This is an exquisite fountain….a real eye catcher. Would love to stand there and feel the droplets of water hitting my face. This is a magnificent park. We have nothing lie this around here. I have to go to Richmond to see lovely and spacious gardens. Your captures are so nice. genie
Oh, more water! Love the fountain, it’s beautiful. Fountains are right up there next to waterfalls as my favorites!! Now that I think about it we don’t have a lot of fountains around here and I live near the largest city in Arkansas! Wonder why? We do have a lot of natural waterfalls, though, along our many rivers!
Sculpted from sand dunes? That’s amazing. It is a gorgeous fountain and setting, but what it is the creature and what is the creature doing?
Thanks for your comment on Stone Creek. I’ve been so frustrated with Blogger and Google – they’re getting very intrusive and arbitrary and I don’t like the new formats they’re trying to impose. But I don’t like WordPress, either, as it’s too difficult and doesn’t work very well–WP blogs are often very slow.
Then I ran into Weebly. I like it so far. It’s quite simple and fairly intuitive.
I love the fountain! And yesterday’s folly – I always thought it would be nice to have a folly and what a location!
Nice fountain. I will be glad when it is time to turn our fountains back on after the long, idle winter months.
Beautiful fountain.
I especially like your first photo.
Regards and best wishes
SO beautiful! I love that first shot.. is that an eel? Thank you for sharing on ‘Weekly Top Shot.’ I hope you’ll come share again next week…