The first thing most people do when they see the Lockeford Emporium is stop in their tracks — it’s historic, beautifully restored and stands in the heart of California’s Gold Rush–era country.

For more than 20 years, the venerable 1883 brick landmark building at the center of the small town of Lockeford sat dark and boarded up, the kind of building locals pointed at but never entered.

Now it’s back on the market, its doors swung open by two owners who fell hard for its history — and hope the next buyer will, too. The asking price is $700,000.

“I’ll be sweeping or wiping off the counter top, and I’ll have the door open, and without fail five or 10 people will stick their heads in the door and say, ‘my God, I’ve always wondered what’s in this building, it’s been boarded up my whole life,” Nancy Kramer, who owns the property with her husband Daniel, said. “This is such a beautiful building. So we’re giving tours to people all the time.”

The corner structure, designed by renowned architect Charles Beasely, is on the National Register of Historic Places, one of 36 in San Joaquin County. The town of Lockeford (population 3,900) sits 38 miles south of Sacramento.

The elegantly restored main floor inside the 3,200-square-foot building is grand, polished and ideal as a bar or venue for wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners. Upstairs is meticulously staged as an Airbnb retreat that comes with modern amenities, Old West charm and quaint stories about ghosts. Downstairs, the basement — built with post-and-beam construction — can work as an intimate speakeasy-style hangout or recreation room.

Daniel and Nancy Kramer, who live about 10 minutes away from the historic building, didn’t set out to become small-town preservationists. But they are now.

“There’s no way we can sell it to somebody who doesn’t appreciate (the history),” Daniel said. “That has to be, for us, in the forefront.”

Built for town founder’s family

The couple farm, grow grapes, own a geophysics and environmental company called Petralogix, run a gold-mining operation and manage a YouTube channel called Blood and Gold Mining that has 22,000 subscribers.

The Emporium — built by Lockeford town founder Dr. Dean Jewett Locke as a commercial hub with a living space for his family upstairs — was already a heritage survivor when the Kramers came along. Previous owner Harold Lepelley bought a building that, as Nancy puts it, was barely standing.

Now, it’s a shiny beacon inside and out. Lepelley rebuilt the bones and lavished the building with period details and salvaged treasures. When the Kramers bought it, they didn’t have to start from scratch.

“He had a building that had been closed for close to 20 years,” Daniel said. “It had settled somewhere between six and 12 inches. It was falling down… it just was not going to come back to life. It is a historic structure registered as one in the state. I think it’s one of a few hundred in the state that have the same kind of age of significance.

“So it was just really falling apart. But (Lepelley) was really passionate about bringing history and architecture back to life, and he wanted to do all the renovations to make something great of it,” he said.

“When we got it, it was in beautiful condition, actually,” Nancy added.

The location — 13480 E. State Highway 88 — puts the Lockeford Emporium not only in the heart of the Old West but close to popular destinations.

“Positioned amidst the picturesque landscapes, it occupies a unique space, straddling the realms of a burgeoning wine town, neighboring the renowned vineyards of Lodi, and a rugged cowboy enclave, bordered by the storied Clements rodeo grounds and the bustling Rancho Murieta event center,” the property description reads. “Its proximity to the historic Gold Country, including Angels Camp, adds to its allure, invoking echoes of California’s rich past.”

Western saloon meets wine tasting

Step inside, and the space evokes a blend of Western saloon and wine‑country tasting room. A massive mahogany bar, salvaged by Lepelley from the old British Bankers Club in Menlo Park anchors the room. European light fixtures hang overhead. Visitors have identified Tiffany glass among the furnishings, Nancy said.

Nancy added a showstopper piece herself: a square grand Chickering & Sons piano dating to 1853, close to the time when Locke’s family dug the foundation for the building.

“I found this crazy piano for like $1,200,” she recalled. “We found the chain of custody in it. I think the people who organized the estate sale maybe didn’t even know it was a piano, because it was closed in a big, red, taped box. (Decades ago), they put it on a ship, and it went around the tip of South America and up to San Francisco, spent some time there, and then slowly made its way — and now it’s in the Emporium. It’s really beautiful.”

The Kramers turned the upstairs living quarters into a short‑term rental. The second floor is now a fully outfitted Airbnb with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, living room and sitting area above Main Street.

But Lockeford Emporium isn’t just historic and livable — it may be a little haunted too, the Kramers said. Their Airbnb listing— it has a five-star rating — is titled “Haunted … The Lockeford Emporium.”

““We’ve had a few dozen people stay there,” Nancy said. “We’ve turned down two or three people in the last three weeks because it’s up for sale.”

Down below, the brick basement — once scratch storage — has been reshaped as a speakeasy‑style hangout with a tiki bar and pool table, the kind of low‑ceilinged space that practically demands blues or bluegrass, Daniel said.

“It’d be amazing for (playing the) blues,” Daniel said. “It’s a place for people to go to hang out.”

Price of restoration

The Kramers estimate they’ve put at least $100,000 into their phase of the restoration, and say a future owner who wants a full commercial kitchen and fire‑rated ceiling downstairs might need an equally large investment.

In the meantime, they’ve formed the Petralogix Preservation Society nonprofit to support arts, music and history projects, with the plan of gathering donations to use the building as a kind of quasi‑museum and community hub if it didn’t sell.

For now, they’re stepping back — but not away from the building’s story. Nancy spent weeks reading the digitized diaries of Locke’s wife, Delia, preserved by the University of the Pacific. The journals, she said, turn the Emporium from an old structure into a living record.

“His wife, Delia, came a few years later from the East Coast, and she wrote a journal every single day for probably 40 or 50 years,” Nancy said. “The University of the Pacific digitized all of her journals. I spent weeks just ignoring my family and pouring over it.

“It’s so fascinating because she not only writes about the weather every day and the mundane goings‑on of the town, but she’ll throw in something like, ‘We just heard word that the final railroad stake got put in for the Transcontinental Railroad — sure is going to change things up here,’ or ‘Abraham Lincoln was elected.’ Historical events mixed in with everyday life of the Central Valley,” Nancy said.

The Emporium, Delia recorded, was built for their son Luther’s meat market and his wife’s hat shop, with the family living upstairs. The bricks were handmade from local clay pits, she noted, by Chinese laborers who also helped build the region.

Against that real history, the building’s ghost stories feel more like colorful footnotes than the main plot. Still, the Kramers have found that a little spectral marketing doesn’t hurt.

“Someone stayed there and felt like they were kind of ghosted out a little bit,” Nancy said. “You don’t want to scare everyone, but little things have happened. And so Dan and I thought, well, maybe we’ll lean into that and market it as the Haunted Emporium. And all of a sudden we started getting way more hits on people wanting to stay there. They’re like, ‘We love ghosts.’

“Daniel and I both don’t — well, I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m ghost‑agnostic,” she joked. “Right now, I walk around burning sage, saying ‘I don’t believe in you, but if you’re here …’ ”

Local residents like what they see

Whether guests come for the piano, the bar or the possibility of a brush with the unexplained, the couple says the reaction from locals is consistent: relief that something is finally happening inside.

“People are champing at the bit to have something available for them — to go spend time, spend money,” Nancy said. “They want a cool place to go.”

The couple isn’t looking for the highest bidder so much as someone who will finish the job that they and Lepelley started.

“That building is really the heart of the town. When it opens, it will be like the pulse of the town,” Nancy said. “The town needs one main heart center for there to be a contagious effect and for other businesses to thrive.”

They are even willing to help the right buyer get there.

“We’re in a position where we can help the right buyer to some degree with special terms or financing. Not just the bank,” Daniel said. “If it’s hard for somebody to get who otherwise wouldn’t, but they have drive and vision, it might be possible. It never hurts to reach out.”

Whether Lockeford Emporium becomes a place to host receptions and dinners or something else, guests will arrive at the intersection of the past and future.

“Historically speaking, this building set the stage for the American West,” Daniel said.

Bruce Renfrew of California Outdoor Properties is the listing agent.

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