Sutter Creek Fire District - 100 year Celebration

This photo taken circa 1927 shows the fire truck built by the Sutter Creek Fire Department's mechanics and other volunteers.

Sutter Creek has always been blessed to have a pool of talented mechanics who have built and/or maintained our fire engines. Once motorized vehicles became available, they took the first step to build a fire truck. In the early photos, you can see that they mounted our existing 40-gallon Nott Chemical Fire Extinguisher, which was purchased in 1910, on a Dodge pickup.

The man in the driver's seat of the 1934 Dodge is Shirley Clemens, who was instrumental in building the 1934 and 1939 Dodge fire trucks. J.J. Capetanich is standing on the tailboard.

The Chemical Extinguisher was originally on cart wheels and was pulled by manpower to the fires. We still have the hose reel, the hose basket, and the nozzle that you can see stored behind the toolbox on the running board. This unit was probably built at Cap's Garage on Eureka Street in Sutter Creek.

Another photo of the Sutter Creek Fire Department's 1934 Dodge fire truck.

The first engine was in use until the '30s, at which time a subscription from the community made it possible to build an engine on a new 1934 Dodge chassis. We still have the notebook used to record the donations and newspaper articles describing the new engine and the State Fire Agency tests before it was put into service.

Sutter Creek used the 1934 Dodge until 1960, when the department got its first "store-bought" engine from Van Pelt Fire Engines in Oakdale, California. At that time the 1934 Dodge was given or sold to Fiddletown, and it is still there. It does not need alot of work to make it parade ready, and we hope to restore it during the next few years.

The Sutter Creek mechanics built a fire truck for Amador City on a new Dodge chassis in 1939. Amador City, which is just one mile north of our main fire station, is now part of the Sutter Creek Fire District.

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, and the Chronicling America Database