Couple researches Enloe’s former home

CHICO — A couple moving to Chico asked their realtor for a “historic” home near the park.

They didn’t know it would end up being a home initially owned by the physician Newton Thomas Enloe — the namesake of Enloe Health.

Anna Alexander, and her partner Dustin Vaught, are the newest owners of 488 E. Third St. Moving in about two months ago, the two have since learned its true origin starting with Enloe, and are determined to tell the story of the home’s various uses through the decades.

“We had a realtor and we had a very short list of demands: historic home near the park,” said Alexander. “All we knew when we bought it was that it was built in 1950, and it was built by the son of Dr. Enloe — and it turns out that none of that is right.”

Alexander and Vaught, since purchasing their home, have launched a research campaign to gather as much information as possible about the home by turning to social media. They are currently documenting their research and telling the story live on the image platform, Instagram, with the handle @enloeestate.

Alexander teaches public history at Cal State East Bay and said it has been her dream to purchase a historic house in her hometown of Chico.

The two first began by researching city records and the Enterprise-Record archives for any information they could find. The more they looked, the more layers they peeled back.

Former tenants have reached out, telling Alexander and Vaught of their stays at the house. Alexander said at points through time, the house served as an elegant venue for charity parties; a “palace” for a peculiar social group; a fraternity house neighbors fought hard against; and even as an office space.

“I immediately went to newspapers.com and started looking through the Enterprise-Record. … I really had no information,” Alexander said. “We heard rumors there was a frat, and that’s kind of all we had.”

Original deed

In their research, Alexander and Vaughn found the original deed to the home at the Butte County Clerk Recorder’s Office, and learned the original plot was purchased by Enloe on May 25, 1934 from the estate of Annie Bidwell for $1,500.

Following the prohibition era, one peculiar clause was included in the contract, but never became realized — evident by fraternities who would come to throw parties in the 1980s and ’90s.

“Said land is sold … on the condition that the grantee, his heirs or assigns, shall not use … said land … for the purpose of making or selling intoxicating liquors … should said condition or covenant be broken, the title herein granted shall cease, revert to and be vested in the heirs or assigns of Annie Ellicott Kennedy Bidwell,” the deed stated.

At the time, the plot of land extended from Third Street all the way up to Annie’s Glenn. But slowly in the coming years, new owners would come to subdivide the property, according to Alexander.

Enloe era

Their first mission is to add the home to historic registries. To do so, Alexander and Vaught are working on a narrative about the social history of the property, focusing on the time Enloe and his family occupied the house.

Many parts of the original home have been removed or renovated, and therefore don’t meet some criteria for its architectural significance. But the two think they have a good chance to register the house by writing a narrative on its social history.

“I’ve read all these stories about the Enloe’s and later owners throwing whole massive parties for the community. Ice cream socials; strawberry socials,” Alexander said. “In the ’30s and ’40s, this was like a socialite mansion where charity events happened. Something called Mrs. Enloe’s Sunken Gardens — I guess she was this amazing gardener with roses and camellias.”

“There were adorable stories of events that happened here,” Vaught said, “They’re so charming like (Enloe’s) daughter had an ice cream social, and it lists every person who attended this 3-year-old’s birthday party.”

By 1934, when the deed was signed, Enloe was 62 years old and his first hospital about 21 years old. Enloe Hospital would move to its location on The Esplanade in 1937 — all significant events to occur after the Great Depression, according to Chico historian Dave Nopel.

“The hospital by the 1930s had really, I’m going to say, become a very real and ongoing important part of the community — the single real hospital for the community — which would allow Dr. Enloe … to buy a nice new house where most people were scrambling in the depression era there.

“The Great Depression had settled in over Chico by ‘35, and I’m going to guess that only people with some real means could go ahead and build a big new house like that,” Nopel said.

“And of course to keep the hospital functioning and raising money for improvements and maintenance, I guess was a challenge. So very possibly, they needed to turn to charities to get support for that hospital.”

Decades following

While Alexander and Vaught work towards building the narrative around Enloe, the two have learned even more about the house in the following decades.

The two found the house had about 10 owners before themselves, including a manager from the Diamond Match Company; the son of a California governor; a businessman who first intended to subdivide the land; a building for a social club called Sunarts that was called the “palace;” a family they don’t know much about; a fraternity that caught negative attention while there; and owners who offered the house as transitional housing for people during COVID-19 lockdowns.

“It feels like every decade you look at the history of this house, there was something very different going on in the house,” Vaught said.

Almost 90 years passed after Enloe first purchased the home. For Vaught, the decades of changes to him represent reflections of what was going on in Chico during the time.

It spans eras from Enloe, who made his means as a physician in the Great Depression; to owners looking to subdivide during post-war development; to two college boys that ran a fraternity out of the building; to a regular single family home.

Now, the two are in the era of “post-COVID, work from home from the Bay Area, coming back to a small town,” Alexander said. “We’re able to live here because we’re basically work from home.”