History Buff: Duke Davis Park honors Roseville historian

Leonard Duke Davis is the godfather of Roseville history. About a month ago, the citys park and recreation department made him an offer he couldnt refuse.Davis learned a new park adjacent to Diamond Creek Elementary School would be named after him and called Duke Davis Park.Im not worthy, said Davis, 78, the author of four books about Roseville history and founder of the Roseville Historical Society-Carnegie Museum. Theres a lot better people more qualified than me for a park to be named after.Whether thats true or not, Davis has no peers in the knowledge of Roseville history. Hes the book on Roseville history, said Phoebe Astill, curator for the Roseville Historical Society.The dedication for Duke Davis Park, located on the corner of Northpark Drive and Hopscotch Way, will take place today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.Dukes a very humble man, said Tara Gee, Roseville Parks and Recreation Department senior landscape architect. It took a lot of convincing to get him to come to the dedication and say a few words.Davis saves most of his talking for his informative historical recounts of the city, which includes his first offering, From Trail To Rail, printed in 1964 to coincide with the centennial anniversary of Roseville. Davis also authored Rosevilles Old Town, High On The Hill, a historical work about Roseville High School, and his most recent book, Milestones and Memories, covering the history of Roseville from 1850-2000.Davis was born in Roseville in 1926 and graduated from Roseville High in 1944. He was drafted into the army and fought in World War II before spending 41 years as a schoolteacher in the Grant and Los Rios districts. Not surprisingly, he mostly taught California and United States history courses.As a kid growing up in the 1930s, Roseville was limited to both sides of the railroad track, he said. Beyond that, the town pretty much ended. Most of my contemporaries from high school eventually worked for the railroad like their fathers before them.Roseville was born out of the railroad, maintained by the railroad and owes its growth to the railroad, said Davis, whose father was a railroad worker.However, Davis broke the mold. Instead of taking a job working on the railroad, he attended Placer College (now Sierra College) when it was located in Auburn and went on to Sacramento State where he earned his masters degree in social sciences.After college, there came a point when I realized I didnt know the history of my own hometown, he said.Davis set out to do something about it and started collecting every piece of Roseville history he could lay his hands on. He also said he spent hundreds of thousands of hours going through back issues of Placer Herald newspapers gathering information.Although Davis expends boundless energy on historical research, some of which is featured in The Press-Tribune every Wednesday (Days Gone By), he still considers it a hobby.I dont golf or anything, so by doing this I get to travel around and meet lots of interesting people, he said. The research and writing is like putting together a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I never start off with a definite theme. I just research something and piece it all together.Tim Menicutch can be reached at timm@goldcountrymedia.com.