This last month, the Kelley House received an interesting request from innkeeper Ken Taylor for an historic map that would show the grounds of the Joshua Grindle House. Our go-to vintage maps are the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, but the northeast part of Mendocino, where the Grindle House is located, showed only a portion of his property. Mendocino City. Detail from the 1909 U. S. Coast [...]
For any readers unclear about the concept of defensible space please read about the massive 1931 Comptche Fire and how people survived in the middle of a firestorm. It’s a good lesson on what saves lives. Mendocino County - Comptche fire - 1:30 p.m. September 22, 1931. (Charles R Clar, Fritz-Metcalf Collection, Bioscience & Natural Resources Library, UC Berkeley) On September 22, 1931, the easterly and [...]
Flaming log rafts? How does something already floating in the Pacific Ocean catch fire? Some true events in maritime shipping will always remain a mystery. For the last column in our series on log rafts comes this history tidbit from the August 9, 1941 Mendocino Beacon. Fort Bragg wharf on the left. Structure in the center is the slipway built to launch a log raft. “Radio [...]
In recent weeks, the Kelley House Calendar has focused on log rafts and the vessels pulling them. Log rafts were exactly what the term suggests, logs tied up with chains that were towed to a sawmill in a sunny location where sunshine could dry out fresh cut boards. Practiced from 1906 to 1942, rafts became the cheapest way to move a lot of logs 1,000 miles [...]