If these walls could talk

“I call this street Mayberry,” joked Nickols. “When my grandparents lived here, all of the neighbors took care of each other and not much has changed.”

While county records, which state the home was built in 1912, contest Nickols’ claim, the house is older than the records show.   

According to the East Contra Costa Historical Society, the small, one-story home was first built in the early 1860s in Nortonville, one of the area’s mining towns that benefited from the discovery of coal and the development of the Black Diamond Mining Company.

At the end of the coal-mining operation in 1902, coal miners didn’t just move out of town, they moved their houses with them. Relocating houses was a common endeavor. Remarkably, homes were moved with little more than a team of horses or mules, supporting lumber beams and a few men.

Nickols says his home was first moved from Nortonville to Antioch, where his great-grandparents, who were farmers, rented the home that would be passed down through his family for generations.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Nickols said his great grandfather took his horses and a cart into the city and rummaged through the debris to find lumber and supplies to build a second-story addition on the home.

“My great grandfather brought back wood and doors from what used to be an old hotel on Castro Street,” said Nickols, who added that his great grandfather got the rest of the lumber for the second story from old boxcar lumber. The walls of the front room on the second story of his house are still lined with narrow yellow, brown and green planks that were once part of the colorful boxcars that rode the rails in the early 1900s.

Nickols’ grandparents officially bought the house that their parents rented in 1912 and moved the house to Brentwood, where they rented a lot on Oak Street.

“My grandmother didn’t like living on Oak Street because there were so many saloons in town back then,” said Nickols. 

His father, who served in World War II, purchased a lot on Second Street after the war, and the house was moved a third time to the location where it now stands.

The house has many stories within its walls. Even the windows have their own tale to tell. The 1944 Port Chicago explosion sent seismic shockwaves that were felt as far away as Boulder City, Nevada. Nickol’s grandmother said the entire house shook that day and left cracks in their front window, which still can be seen to this day.

As Nickols fumbles with an old skeleton key to his historic home, he smiles.

“This is a beautiful place to live,” said Nickols. “I love this house.”

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