Look Tin Eli, circa 1910 (courtesy of the Look Family) The story of Look Tin Eli begins in Mendocino, California, in 1870. Born and raised on the rugged headlands of the north coast, as a child Tin could stand 70 feet above the pounding surf and look out over the Pacific Ocean, watching steamers and schooners coming in and out of Mendocino Bay below him. At [...]
The Michael James Hill Memorial Triangle at the intersection of Lansing and Main Streets in Mendocino, 2019. A few weeks ago, this column presented photographs of the Wye in Mendocino, circa 1957. This intersection of Main and Lansing Streets was then a non-descript wayside that lay between three strips of pavement, decorated by a couple of stop signs and a native pine tree planted by the [...]
by Christina Aranguren with Carol Dominy View of Brown and Davis houses on Pine Street between 1914 and 1921. The H.H.Brown house is the two-story near the bottom of the photo with the water tower. Their daughter's bungalow is behind on the left. The large building on the left hill with the tall water tower is the original high school, replaced in 1949 with the one [...]
The Wye intersection at Main and Lansing in Mendocino, 1957. Courtesy of Bette Duke. For about a hundred years, Highway 1 came right through the town of Mendocino. Not around it as it does today. It wasn’t until the 1960s that today’s wide pavement was built, zipping cars at 55 miles per hour around the east side of downtown. Before then, your southbound highway journey would [...]
Way back at the turn of the present century, an oral history project was undertaken by a group of two dozen Mendocino Middle School children. This group of youngsters, now twenty years older, has left us a valuable record of twelve “Old Timers” and their experiences here on the coast. The project, led by Deena Zarlin, past Kelley House board member and active in the educational [...]
Vault Shed Before 1990 There is a popular exhibit on the walls of the Kelley House Museum called “Then and Now.” Visitors are offered the opportunity to compare two framed photos of the same place, taken about one hundred years apart. You can see the bay-windowed Jarvis-Nichols general store on the corner of Main and Kasten Streets bedecked with patriotic bunting for the July 4th parade [...]
Ad for "The Trilby Shoe", circa 1900 Putting together the clothing exhibit “Form & Function of Fashion: The Way We Wore,” now showing at the Kelley House Museum through March 18th, I was able to learn a lot about things I typically don’t think too much about. For instance, our lovely women’s hats, gloves and fans were once viewed as absolutely essential if you were to [...]
1867 Survey Map of Mendocino It’s always interesting to go back to the beginning. We like to know where it all started, what it was like before, how it was different from today. Perhaps that’s why books and movies with historical settings are popular. Authors and screenwriters provide us with wonderfully detailed pictures of an earlier world with compelling drama, interesting plot twists and intriguing characters [...]
It’s been years -- generations -- since anything has happened at that place in Mendocino where Lansing Street comes down the hill to meet Main. This level area above the bluffs overlooking the Bay has been empty since 1941 when the biggest hotel in town, the three-storied Occidental, was destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. Over the years, footpaths wound through the volunteer trees and wild [...]
Sign for Jack Peters Creek Bridge on Highway 1. The bridge was completed in 1939, one of the Works Progress Administration projects of the New Deal. Get you a copper kettle, get you a copper coil. Fill it with new made corn mash and never more you'll toil. (Folksong written by Frank A Beddoe in the 1950s) This summer, I stopped by the [...]