by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Volunteer On a wet winter morning, few things are better than shelter, a hot cup of coffee, and a story, especially a local one. In 1938, a steamer ran aground off the Mendocino Coast. Built in 1918 in Toledo, Ohio, as a military ship, she was christened the Lake Cayuga. With the end of World War I, she was repurposed as [...]
by Anne Cooper, Kelley House Museum Curator Having recently lived without electric power here on the Coast, it is not as difficult to imagine the lives of those who came before the phrase “screen time” came into use! Our next exhibit at the Kelley House Museum will take a look at how people chose to spend their free time before the arrival of electronic gadgets. Not [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Volunteer If you read Part I of this topic last week, you know that Fort Bragg is the home of the first Pacific Coast cigar raft. As early as 1889, coastal lumber companies experimented with smaller oceangoing rafts on Big River, and had successfully pulled a 700-foot articulated raft to San Francisco. Eager to increase capacity and further drive down shipping [...]
There is a new special collection in the archives of the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino named The Point Cabrillo Light Station Collection. The material was provided by the Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association (PCLK) and includes architectural drawings, photos, maps, and correspondence relating to the construction and early maintenance of the Light Station. Physical access to these records is by appointment only at the Kelley House Museum [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House volunteer One of the strangest ocean-going crafts to grace the seas was built locally in Fort Bragg. Hundreds of feet long, brown, tapered at each end, it was sometimes mistaken for a whale or described as a giant “Perfecto” cigar. Invented to bypass high shipping costs, the cigar raft was cheaper and safer transportation—at least in theory. Developed in the 1880s [...]