While many people are familiar with the internment camps for people of Japanese ancestry that the US government established during World War II, few folks realize this was not the only group incarcerated in California. Residents of Mendocino County born in Germany or Italy were also considered “enemy aliens.” Pete and Rosa Piccolotti posing at their Big River ranch in 1930 with their children: Ida, [...]
Map illustrating the extent of the Albion Branch of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad (“Western Railroader” by Stanley T. Borden, Vol. 24, No. 12. December 1961, Issue No. 264) Questions about the Albion Lumber Company’s miles of railroad on the Mendocino Coast have been popping up at the Kelley House Museum recently. Here’s a review of how this little-known railroad came to be, what it [...]
The Albion Field Station of Pacific Union College has produced an amazing body of work after 60 years of research on myriad topics relating to the Mendocino Coast. Thirty years ago, Dr. Richard White was publishing “Mendocino Medicine and Gazetteer” and highlighted the station’s research on natural history. Here’s some information on the Albion area I’d bet most folks don’t know exists. Railroad Slough on [...]
Katy Tahja Below is a tale of serendipity that illustrates the talents of one of our most enthusiastic (and smart) volunteers – Ms. Katy Tahja. Her ability to bring together seemingly unrelated facts and recall items from years ago make her a great storyteller and one of our most valued supporters. The chatter in the Kelley House archives sounded something like this…”Does anyone know [...]
An event happened during World War II in Oregon that could have easily happened on the Mendocino Coast if Mother Nature’s winds had blown farther south. Unidentified volunteer searching the sky for enemy aircraft and exploding balloons at the Comptche Aircraft Warning Station, c. 1945. According to the Mendocino Beacon, “The service is all voluntary but the best information we have is that there must [...]
As a Kelley House docent researching a book on the Orr Hot Springs area, I have amassed more information than I could ever possibly use in what I plan to be a small publication on the subject. While the who, what, when, where, why and how facts get arranged into chronological order, it’s the odd, poorly documented tidbits of information that keep distracting me. Postcard [...]
Mendocino County produced many memorable women, but one proudly declared her occupation as “Capitalist.” This was Elise Drexler, daughter of Mendocino coast pioneers William and Eliza Kelley. A side portrait of the Kelley’s second daughter, Elise, in her twenties. Born in 1866, she was educated at the public schools here, and then at a girls’ private school, and later went to Mills College in [...]
The old MacCallum family of Mendocino included not just Alex and Daisy, but also their children, Donald and Jean. We don’t know a great deal about these two. Neither married. A view of the south and east elevations of the MacCallum House from Albion Street, taken at about the time of Daisy Kelley MacCallum’s death. A flag pole in the front yard was erected in [...]
Here is another fascinating look into county history left to us by the late Dr. Richard White’s “Mendocino Medicine and Gazetteer.” In the 1990s, White published this small magazine of rural health information for medical practitioners and always made space for writings about his science and nature interests. Deborah White of Ukiah loaned bound volumes of his writings to the Kelley House Museum so that we [...]
Following hot on the heels of our wonderfully fun and successful “History and More” book sale, here's another chance to capture a bit of Mendocino history. And if you're a local from a long-time family, you might find your ancestors. Three of the twenty-six volumes of the Mendocino High School Yearbooks that Kelley House Museum would like to find new homes for. These covers reflect the [...]