The story of Guerneville’s famed Pond Farm artist colony starts with an architect, a coffee heiress and a Nazi-escaping potter, and ends with death, fire and, eventually, a renewed significance.

A Kloubec Earthworks supervisor moves dirt for a berm while working on a new pond at Central Park in Jones County on April 30, 2015. The one-and-a-half acre pond is part of multiyear lake restoration ...