1867 Survey Map of Mendocino It’s always interesting to go back to the beginning. We like to know where it all started, what it was like before, how it was different from today. Perhaps that’s why books and movies with historical settings are popular. Authors and screenwriters provide us with wonderfully detailed pictures of an earlier world with compelling drama, interesting plot twists and intriguing characters [...]
by Jane Tillis, Board member Kelley House Museum Director-Curator Karen McGrath There’s new leadership at the Kelley House Museum. Karen McGrath, Director-Curator, has succeeded Anne Cooper, who held the position for three years before returning to her home in San Diego. Karen is a relatively new resident of the Coast, having moved here in October 2016, but she and her husband have been visitors to the [...]
A Mystery School in Albion Why is it a mystery? Because if you check in “What Became of the Little Red Schoolhouse” Volume 1-Mendocino Area, there is no school pictured that looks like this one. Behind the schoolhouse, it looks like the coastline, but it could be a bluff top inland. And, of course, if I have five of the six volumes that make up the [...]
Coastal Lumber Schooner These tidbits of shipping history on the Mendocino Coast started from an investigation into why the Union Lumber Company’s California Western Railroad Navigation subsidiary had the word “navigation” in the title. Well, in 1905 all finished lumber products were sent to the San Francisco Bay Area by sea. It would be a decade before the railroad from Fort Bragg to Willits was finished [...]
Kelley House Winter “Fashion” Exhibit, Fridays-Mondays 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. What was hanging in the closets of Coast residents before there were polyester leisure suits? The Kelley House Museum will explore that question with its new winter exhibit featuring the fabrics, the forms, and the function of clothing worn by the people of Mendocino during the period 1860 to 1960. Curated from the [...]
Metsker's Atlas of Mendocino County, California, May 1954 As a docent at the Kelley House Museum, I love looking at old maps of Mendocino. While there are many to peruse in the archives there, I made an internet discovery that has entertained me for hours. Google “Historic Map Works” and “Mendocino County 1954” and you will see extremely detailed maps of our county fully indexed by [...]