It was October 2016 when Mike McCoy was appointed executive director of the Kern County Museum.
“I got here and I heard from the community that the Chinese built Kern County. So we did the Joss House and a couple other things,” McCoy recalled.
“But people were still unhappy because they said the Okies and the Dust Bowlers built Kern County. So we did a Dust Bowl Exhibit, the Bakersfield Sound and Merle Haggard’s boxcar house. And they were happy.
“So we have a house for the African Americans, the Pinkney House,” he said, “and a house for the Jewish folks, which is the Weill House.
“And we have two structures for Latinos, the Adobe and the Lopez-Hill House. Everybody’s happy, right?
“Then the Basques come in … so we did the Basque sheep exhibit, Pyrenees Bakery and the Noriega Bar. Basques are happy. Everybody’s happy, right?
“Did you know the Italians built Kern County?”
In all seriousness, McCoy is delighted by his latest acquisition: a home built more than eight decades ago near Pumpkin Center by John Bugni for his new wife, Antonia Fachin Bugni.
The Kern County Museum moved the 83-year-old farmhouse into Pioneer Village last week.
“John Bugni built a simple two-bedroom, one bath house, and then he added a little ‘L’ shape parlor in the 1940s. What we did was, with the Bugni family’s permission, we chopped it off, and this is going to be a wine-tasting room,” McCoy said of the front part of the house.
The small section of the house will be set up in what McCoy calls the “bandstand green,” one of the most popular areas of the village for large events.
“This is going to be a wine-tasting room for weddings and events, and it’s going to be paid for by the Giumarra family,” he said.
The new exhibits are expected to help represent the stories and contributions of Italian immigrants who moved to Kern County, where many became pioneers in farming and ranching.
“Antonia Fachin was from an Italian immigrant family, but John was actually born in Piedmont, Italy,” McCoy said.
“They built this farmhouse in 1940 out by Pumpkin Center,” he said. “All the families out there were mostly Bugnis, so they called it Bugni Acres.”
The larger section of the farmhouse, or “cascina,” will feature a commercial kitchen and support a planned children’s garden. Funding for the project — planned for the southeast side of Pioneer Village — comes from the Italian Dante Society, the Italian Heritage Foundation, the Lazzerini Family Foundation and a number of other private donors.
Joe Bugni, 77, the nephew of the late John Bugni, said it was pure coincidence that he was able to offer the old house to the museum.
“My family was not looking for notoriety or attention,” Bugni said. “We want the exhibits to represent not just our family, but the legacy of all Italians in Kern County.”
It was 1900 or so when Paulo Bugni, Joe Bugni’s grandfather, came to the United States from the mountainous Alps region of northern Italy.
“They had nothing” in the old country, Joe Bugni said. “Just a little rock house on the top of a hill.”
When Paulo Bugni arrived in Kern County, he got a job milking cows. It wasn’t long before the family would establish a dairy of its own.
It was 1919 or 1920 when Joe Bugni’s grandparents bought the 85 acres they still live on today, Joe Bugni said.
Everyone lived on Wible Road or within rock-throwing distance from Wible Road.
And now, the modest little home in Bugni Acres will have a new home and a new life at the museum.
“We couldn’t be happier the way this is working out,” Bugni said.
