How a Local Antique Shop Became the Old West Gun Room

Roxy Miraválle is Director of Historical Research for the San Pablo Historical Society and webmaster for the El Sobrante Historical Society.

By Roxy Miraválle

A postcard from the late 1950s or early 1960s for San Pan Antiques with owner Clarence Miller. The moose antlers that now adorn the outside of the building would come when it became the Old West Gun Room. Images courtesy Roxy Miravalle

If you’ve ever driven down Carlson Boulevard toward the El Cerrito Plaza, you may have passed by an old storybook-cottage-looking structure that looks out of place today and is almost completely hidden beneath a towering pine tree. It’s perhaps the most unusual building in El Cerrito.

This is the Old West Gun Room. If you’ve ever wondered about the history behind this odd-looking and mysterious rock-clad building, wonder no more.

The Old West Gun Room looks like it’s always been there, partly because of the rustic building it calls home and partly for the way it is decorated. Thinking about the name of the place, it may seem even older. The structure has four 2-foot-thick stone walls with wrought-iron window frames and a corrugated tin roof. A stone-and-chain-link fence — real chain supporting wagon wheels — and wrought-iron gates featuring two bigger wagon wheels adorn the front. It looks like something an early settler might have built.

But the building was actually built by Clarence William Miller [1894-1958] from scratch to house his retail business, San-Pan Antiques. Miller, a native of Nebraska, came to the Bay Area in the 1920s. He married Mary Lucas when they both briefly lived in San Francisco and moved to El Cerrito around 1925. He was well-suited to build this one-of-a-kind place for his new business as he was once a carpenter with a home-building contractor in the 1940s and later a construction foreman working at the Richmond shipyards. Miller touted his structure as a landmark visited by curiosity-seekers and even sold postcards which had the history of the antique shop on the back as seen here on the right. Miller also had a sheet metal workshop at the rear of the property. which explains the tin roofs on the buildings.

An ad for the San-Pan Antique Shop from the Jan. 26, 1975 edition of the Berkeley Gazette newspaper.

Ad from the June 10, 1963 Berkeley Gazette for the Old West Gun Room in its original location.

Description of the antique shop from the back of the postcard shown above.

So, when did this place actually become a gun shop? Well, a 2016 article in the East Bay Times revealed the history of this store noting the original Old West Gun Room was founded in 1952 by George Repaire and was located at 10837 San Pablo Ave. at the corner of Orchard Avenue, seen in the photo at left. The building was originally an old grocery store from about 1910.

The original Old West Gun Room opened in 1952 in an old grocery store at the corner of San Pablo and Orchard avenues.

Dave Cumberland first saw and fell madly in love with the gun shop in 1955 while in the Navy and riding on a San Pablo Avenue bus to Mare Island. He would occasionally stop and chat with Repaire whenever he was in the area. While in Thailand, Cumberland received a letter from his good friend Repaire telling him he was ill and wanted to sell out. Cumberland took the first plane back to California and in July 1962 he bought the business and had the ownership transferred to himself. The gun shop relocated in 1967 to 10855 San Pablo Ave., just two doors down in a former floral shop and nursery owned by the Gerletti family.

Meanwhile, Miller had passed away in 1958, his wife continued running and managing the antique shop on Carlson Blvd. Several years later, she decided to put the business up for sale. Dave Cumberland found out and immediately decided he had to have it and bought it. By 1963, he moved the Old West Gun Room business from San Pablo Avenue to its current location at 3509 Carlson Blvd.

Cumberland said, “from the minute we opened, business increased.” Curious customers would ask about the building and Cumberland would tell how Clarence Miller started building the mortared rock walls of his shop in 1947 by going around town in his Packard pickup truck, picking up rocks around Albany Hill and cementing them together; and how he built his own crane on-site to hoist them in place. One customer who visited in 2013 said: “when you walk inside it’s like walking into a time capsule.”

Business was so good that Cumberland hired an assistant, Robert Weaver, in 1979. However, five years later, Cumberland sold him the business and eventually moved to Florida. These days Weaver, known to some as “Old West Bob,” appears perfectly at home in his dark, quaint-but-busy habitat. He continues to run the store and looks forward to sharing his more than 35 years of experience in the gun business with his customers.

Old West Gun Room’s promotional poster, done with owner Dave Cumberland’s unique sense of humor.