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Excerpt from Mendocino Historical Review Vol. XXVI, Summer, 2012. “Belonging to Places: The Evolution of Coastal Communities and Landscapes between Ten Mile River and Cottoneva Creek.” The remoteness of the northern Mendocino County coast has for most of history demanded self-sufficiency of the people who have made their homes here. V. K. Chestnut and Edward Gifford discuss long lists of native plants harvested by indigenous peoples [...]

Nathaniel Smith, pioneer and stagecoach driver in Mendocino County, circa 1880-1900. (From the Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection, Open UCLA Collections) The Kelley House Museum’s upcoming exhibition—March 1st through May 27th— will illuminate the life and times of Nathaniel Smith. This exhibition was researched, and this article written by, Guest Curator, Alexander Wood. His work was made possible by a grant from California Humanities, a [...]

Rob Hawthorn sharing ghost stories at the Mendocino Hotel When I moved to Mendocino in 1995, I lived in a fantastic two story Victorian with a water tower, built sometime before 1880. I was already a history buff and a fan of ghost stories, so when my mother-in-law started talking about sensing a “mysterious presence” at the top of the stairwell, I was over [...]

Miles Paoli, born in Mendocino in 1906, was instrumental in bringing radio to the Mendocino Coast. As a young man, Miles was not drawn to school particularly. Miles’ parents, Raffaelo and Emelia, were hard working immigrants who had found opportunity in the logging industry. Later, the Paoli family purchased the hotel on Mendocino’s Ukiah Street, which had belonged to the Borgnas, and had been known as [...]

August 20th-24th marks this year’s World Water Week, a non-profit conference held annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). Since its inception in 1991, World Water Week has become the leading conference devoted to global water issues, featuring a variety of participating organizations, including the United Nations. Each year, the conference seeks to bring together a diverse array of people and professions to develop solutions [...]

Mendocino Presbyterian Church, c. 1873 -1890, from the Kelley House Archives. (Gift of Donald Tucker) This week, the Mendocino Presbyterian Church celebrates the 155th anniversary of its sanctuary on Main Street. Officially dedicated on July 5, 1868, it is the oldest Presbyterian Church in continuous use in the State of California (and it enjoys the status of California Historic Landmark No. 714). The origins [...]