A Carleton Watkins photograph of the John and Susan Chalfant house, which was located near the southeast corner of Lansing and Main Street in Mendocino. The people in the foreground are probably Susan Chalfant with her daughter, Mattie. Susan’s house was very similar to the Ford House, located a few hundred feet to the west and occupied by her sister Martha’s family.
Alice Earl Wilder Collection, Kelley House Photographs
The Chalfant House had one and one-half stories, with decorative trim along the eaves. There was a porch on the south side of the house, facing the now-gone Bridge Street. Bridge Street (also known as the Old Coast Road) was situated south of Main Street and served as the primary road leading into Mendocino at the time this house was built. However, when a new grade was constructed around the top of LeBallister Gulch, traffic was rerouted to Main Street, leading to the eventual abandonment of Bridge Street.
The door on the right would be the kitchen door. On the outside wall of that corner room is a cooling box protruding from the house and supported by angled braces. There is a similar box on the Kelley House, a building of comparable age to this one. Items placed into the covered box, which has three louvered sides, could remain cool, outside the kitchen’s interior heat.
John Edward Chalfant was a native of Pennsylvania and came to California in 1850 during the gold rush. Determining that he was not cut out to be a miner, he returned to San Francisco and became a carpenter. In 1852, he arrived in Mendocino to help build the first sawmill. He was engaged in the lumber industry for nearly 25 years.
In 1862, Chalfant married Susan Hayes, sister of Martha Hayes Ford, another Mendocino pioneer family. When the Chalfant family moved to Oakland in 1874, William Norton purchased the house and operated a hotel there. The hotel was destroyed by fire in 1879.
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