A massive pipe organ is dividing a small California town. Can it be saved?
Over the past year, Jacuzzi Family Vineyards' owner Nancy Cline headed up a restoration project of an 1897 Bergstrom pipe organ, which is now housed in the barrel room of the vineyard, where members of the public can be treated to live music. By contrast, the only other California organ from the same maker is languishing in a locked room in El Dorado County. (Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Behind a locked door at the El Dorado County fairgrounds, a pipe organ the size of a studio apartment is collecting dust - and causing headaches for local officials.
Once the centerpiece of a local church here in Placerville, the organ is among two surviving instruments in California made by Swedish craftsman John Bergstrom. But since the church was razed in the late 1950s, it's languished in the fairground's musty "organ room," a mostly-empty warehouse with ceilings vaulted high enough to hold the 22-foot-tall instrument.
While the other California Bergstrom organ was recently restored and moved to a winery, this one hasn't been so lucky.
Officials have spent more than a decade trying to find a new home for the historic instrument, which is one of dozens of organs across the country that churches and communities are struggling to give away or restore. The county estimates it would cost around $200,000 to restore - and an additional $30,000 to relocate.
"It's a shame, really," said fair CEO Kathy Dunkak. "It's a piece of history, but nobody sees it because it's locked up in a building. The only time anybody ever cares about it is when we talk about getting rid of it."
After years of fruitless outreach to churches and museums, the fair set an October 2025 deadline to move the instrument out, hoping to repurpose the little-used organ room as a year-round event space.
The Bergstrom pipe organ inside the organ room in El Dorado County, where it has been the subject of heated local debate. (Courtesy Amanda Koch)
That date came and went amid a standoff with the county's museum commission, which sees the organ as a publicly-owned historical asset that should be kept close to home.
"I sure hope we can find a way to make that wonderful organ accessible to the public," Commissioner Jacob Rigoli said in a meeting of the commission last month.
Rick Berlin, 64, recalls encountering the organ when he worked at the fairgrounds as a teenager. Berlin was cleaning the room with his partner, who was in a rock band. "He sat down and started playing the organ and the spookiest music I ever heard came out of it," said Berlin. "I will never forget that day."
That was 1979. In the years since, the organ has fallen into disrepair. It still plays, but only barely, making a strangled sound that betrays the many bent and missing pieces inside.
El Dorado County isn't the only place with a pipe organ to spare. More than 50 organs are seeking homes on the website Organ Clearing House, where many of the wall-size instruments are available for free. One 40-ton instrument has sat for years in storage beneath San Francisco's City Hall while a preservation group searches for a space large enough to house it.
The problem, according to pipe organ consultant Jack Bethards, is that there are more historic organs than there are institutions with the resources to house them.
The restored 1897 Bergstrom pipe organ at Sonoma County's Jacuzzi Family Vineyards. The restored organ serves as a contrast to the El Dorado County organ, which requires tens of thousands of dollars in repairs. (Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Over the past year, Jacuzzi Vineyard's owner Nancy Cline headed up a restoration project of an 1897 Bergstrom pipe organ, which is now housed in the barrel room of the vineyard, where members of the public can be treated to live music. (Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle)
The United States saw a boom in organs constructed to fill new churches built between the 1880s and 1950s, he said. Since then, some - like the church in El Dorado County - have closed or been demolished, while others now rely on amplified sound or have shifted away from traditional organ hymnody.
The cost of restoring an old organ can also exceed the price of a new one. The instruments' anatomies are delicate: they contain leather and felt that degrade without regular upkeep. But Bethards believes in preserving the antique instruments, both as historical artifacts and "very, very beautiful" objects.
He's especially interested in rescuing El Dorado County's organ because it's a work of Bergstrom's. Many of the organs built in the craftsman's San Francisco studio were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. "Bergstrom was a small company that didn't build a lot of organs," Bethards said. "And there weren't that many organ builders on the West Coast, so it's a rarity in all ways. I think just on that basis alone, it's worth saving."
Bethards' company was commissioned to restore California's other Bergstrom organ, housed in the First Congregational Church of Sonoma until church leadership decided to clear space for its growing congregation in 2017. They approached Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, a local winery with a cavernous event room.
"Nobody in their right mind would take this organ," vineyard owner Nancy Cline said, laughing. But the offer felt serendipitous - Cline said the space is designed to look like an Italian chapel, with an empty apse where the altar (and organ) would be. "And just as the world works, the organ fit perfectly."
The winery spent about $25,000 to restore the organ, Cline said. Now, organists from around the country come to the winery to play it. Recently, it was used for a holiday concert by candlelight, filling the room with the tooth-vibrating music that once scored Sonoma's funerals, weddings and church services.
Composer John Partridge of Oakland played a concert at the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards on Dec. 12, 2025, demonstrating the sound of the restored Bergstrom organ. (Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Rigoli, who is also the treasurer of the El Dorado County Historical Society, wondered aloud if the Clines might have room for a second organ - and the funds to rehabilitate the one at the fairgrounds.
"Or maybe they've got a wealthy friend," he mused. "Another winery owner with a lot of room."
Moving the organ to a private home or business would be an "acceptable outcome," Rigoli said, although it wouldn't be the historical society's first choice. The group prizes the organ as a piece of El Dorado County history that should remain in the county, ideally on public view.
But finding a county-owned space to hold the instrument has been a challenge. The county's Historical Museum Commission - of which Rigoli is also a member - weighed the Placerville Library's garage and the town's historic post office as options in a meeting this fall. But they concluded that neither building's ceilings could accommodate the organ's stature.
Jacuzzi Family Vineyards found a place for their Bergstrom organ in their barrel room, which is used for events. (Brian L. Frank/For the S.F. Chronicle)
Rigoli hopes to strike a compromise with the nonprofit El Dorado County Fair Association to keep the organ where it is, whether or not the instrument is restored. The historical society has proposed helping the fairgrounds raise funds to renovate the organ room into a better-equipped event space, with the provision that the organ stay there.
Dunkak, the fair CEO, isn't entirely opposed, although she suggested a twist: removing the organ's face and turning it into a functional bar.
Rigoli called this a "fascinating idea," but a last resort he would oppose.
"We don't even care how it's saved, if it doesn't get destroyed, or it doesn't get broken down into pieces and stored somewhere for it to rot," Rigoli said. "We just haven't found enough money to find its right home."
