Previous Owners: Herbert and Mable Hild

Present Owners: Edward West

Architecture: Cottage Style

Comments: This brick-face "cottage-style" home perched on a knoll set back from the street was a statement by its original owner-builder Bert Hild, who encouraged home building in the planned "Fair Oaks City". Hild worked for the State Agricultural Department and as a postmaster in Fair Oaks and served as manager of the Fair Oaks Homebuilders Assn. He and his wife Mable, according to the Fair Oaks Progress, entertained over 70 neighbors at their popular annual 4th of July lawn party, and Mrs. Hild entertained the Christmas Club "at her home 'Hildcrest"'. Bert gave priority to landscaping, carefully selecting trees to beautify the lot, and planting quantities of iris (which, it is discovered, do no attract munching deer!).

Ed West, a supervising construction inspector for Sacramento County, purchased the home in 1959 at an estate sale. As a youngster he often hitchhiked out from his family home in Carmichael to swim in the river and see the Saturday movie at the Community Center, on which occasions he often passed, and admired, Hildcrest - not realizing that one day he would live there and rear a family of six rambunctious children! Now retired from the County and construction work and recently acquiring the title Great Grandfather, Ed carries on the Hild tradition of foresting and grooming his knoll.