By Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer One of the best things about working at the Kelley House Museum is the chance to share a love of history with others, to learn from them, and collectively enrich our knowledge of local lore. Such was the case a few weeks ago when reader David Larkin, Jr. donated a twelve-foot-long section of machine-banded redwood water pipe to the [...]
Within ten days of each other, two people fundamental to the traditions and support of the Kelley House passed away. Chuck Bush and Martha Wagner both gave of themselves, their time and their treasure to help establish the Kelley House Museum and make it what it is today. This is not meant to serve as an obituary for either of these benefactors, but rather a remembrance [...]
Between Tuesday, March 7th and Saturday, March 11th, some rather low tides occurred. They are printed in red on the tide table booklet made available by the Mendocino Area Parks Association and are noted at the back of that booklet as “minus tide days.” On the afternoon of March 7th, a Mendocino resident came by the Kelley House to let us know that he had spotted [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer The Mendocino downtown of old was a wild and wooly place -- literally. Today, if you browse the narrow alleys and shops around town, or if you are driving a truck on Albion Street between the Kelley House and the MacCallum House, you can’t help but notice the narrow confines produced by on-street parking, two-way traffic, and eager tourists [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer According to poet Alice Walker, “hard times require furious dancing,” though the traditional idea of a Hard Times Dance is something altogether different. Similar to the Calico Balls of the mid-nineteenth century, which were started for debutantes and morphed into Civil War-era fundraisers for soldiers and wartime widows, a Hard Times Dance was part fun and part fundraiser. In [...]
by Anne Cooper, Kelley House Museum Curator How lasting are our friendships and other relationships? Will our facebook posts exist in perpetuity? Answers to these and similar questions may not be forthcoming until we are all figures of the past. The couple shown here, if couple they were, seem to have shared some sort of relationship. It isn’t merely the photograph which suggests this, but rather [...]
by Katy Tahja, Kelley House Museum Docent While volunteering one Sunday as a docent at the Kelley House Museum, a visitor asked, “How many saloons existed in Caspar in the old days?” I didn’t know, but replied that I’d do some research and write about it. I can now share that information. Much of what I found was in the book that featured entries from the [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer Far from prying eyes on land as beautiful and forlorn as the Scottish Highlands stood the town of Wheeler. Today, less than fifty-six years later, nothing remains of this once vibrant community but the memories shared by the thirty or so families who called it home. Wheeler sat along the Coast at the mouth of Jackass Creek sixty miles [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer During his long and peripatetic life, Martin Mason Hazeltine lived in many places. Born in Vermont in 1827, he was raised with his seven siblings in St. Charles, Illinois. In 1850, he came west in search of gold, following in the footsteps of his younger brother George, but things didn’t pan out and the brothers returned to the East [...]
by Tonia Hurst, Kelley House Museum volunteer When people think of water pipes, they generally think of PVC, copper, iron, clay or concrete pipes, but one material which rarely comes to mind yet which was cheap, abundant, local, and in many respects, a manufacturer’s dream was . . . redwood. The many old water towers prominent around Mendocino attest to redwood’s durability for freshwater storage. It [...]