Join us on Sunday, March 20th, at 4:00 p.m. for our next 'Sunday Afternoon With . . . Matthew Ritenour.' Matt directed the film, Impact of the Frolic, which has been featured as part of our 'Dark &Stormy Night: Mendocino Coast Shipwrecks' exhibit. Matthew Ritenour is a director and cinematographer. His anthropological education brings a rare perspective to the craft of film making. Blending the best [...]
By Katy Tahja We are pleased to announce that Matthew Ritenour, creator of the film on Mendocino’s most famous shipwreck, “Impact of the Frolic” will be speaking at a “Sunday Afternoon With . . .” at the Kelley House Museum, Sunday, March 20 at 4 p.m. as the finale to the exhibit “A Dark & Stormy Night: Mendocino Coast Shipwrecks.” Ritenour has produced a visually stunning [...]
This image recently surfaced at the Kelley House Museum’s archives and carried a note which stated that it was taken in Fort Bragg. Does anyone remember this? Where would this have been? Could it have been located in the California Western Depot or in a hotel lobby? Was it on Main Street or some other well-traveled part of town? The estimated date of the photograph is [...]
By Anne Pierce Cooper Here’s a treasure from the vault of the Kelley House Museum! There’s also a lesson in its survival for everyone who considers whether or not they can afford to be a ‘pack rat.’ Someone, possibly Minnie Olsen’s mother, Julia, made the decision to keep the March 1872 issue of ‘Demorest’s Illustrated.’ Perhaps it was the colored illustrations (as the periodical’s name implies) [...]
By Katy Tahja “A Dark & Stormy Night: Mendocino Coast Shipwrecks…” the current exhibit at the Kelley House, includes information on the first wreck known to have occurred only a few miles north. We refer, of course to the Frolic. To learn much more, plan to come to the Museum February 28 at 4 p.m. to spend a ‘Sunday Afternoon With . . . ‘ Robert [...]
By Martin Simpson “What's in a name?” as the saying goes. Well there’s a lot to learn from a name, especially with regard to geographical locations. The name of cities, towns or “villages” gives the people that live there a sense of place. Even if you’re just passing through, names speak to those locations and their place in time. In the area now occupied by the [...]
By Sarah Nathe Long before 'Pirates of the Caribbean' splashed across the silver screen, another bunch of swashbucklers captured the imagination of Mendocino: Hawaiian love pirates. Staged by Mendocino High School’s Glee Club in March of 1929, “Love Pirates of Hawaii” was an operetta in two acts set in the garden of a girls’ seminary school in Hawaii. It featured alluring young women, U.S. Navy officers [...]
By Katy Tahja To make a historian’s heart go “pitty-pat” hand her a 104-year-old book called “History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California with Biographical Sketches.” Written by A.O. Carpenter and P.H. Millberry, it comprises 156 pages of history and 887 pages of biographies of 600 citizens who paid to have their stories included. While every man, and a few women, thought they were the most [...]
By Anne Cooper, curator According to the website “weather-warehouse.com” which provides historic weather data, the total precipitation for 1914 in Fort Bragg was 17.91 inches. During that year, the maximum precipitation in a single 24 hour period was 2.51 inches. The weather station from which these data were derived is noted as “Fort Bragg 5 N”. That information seems odd, however, because according to a very [...]
By Anne Cooper, Curator As someone new to the archives of the Kelley House, it has been great fun making discoveries. These are not made idly, I hasten to add, but as a result of the wish to share with our community through the pages of the Beacon. In so doing, this rather timely ‘Greeting Card’ of old surfaced. Its small size makes one think of [...]