When we were young, all we wanted for Christmas were our two front teeth. Once we got them, many of us wanted to sink them into some Dungeness crab legs on that holiday. And for almost 170 years in Northern California, we have been granted our wish. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. But in various recent years, demoic acid, migrating whales, and poor [...]
Author Dave Sverko riding his horse and carrying the American flag during the Fourth of July parade of 1976 in Mendocino, California. (Gift of Bill Wagner) When I was about 13, I went to work on the Woodward Ranch, which took in all the area where the Mendocino Coast Hospital is now, as well as the Redwood Health Club and what was later Bolden’s [...]
I was walking down Calpella Street toward the ocean last week when I crossed Woodward Street, Heeser, Rundle, and finally Kelly. Heeser and Kelly I know, but who were Woodward and Rundle? Coming back on Ukiah Street, I encountered Osborn and William. Locals know that, with a few exceptions, the north-south streets in Mendocino are named after early settlers and the east-west streets after nearby places. [...]
When I asked my friend Heather what she knew about the history of her charming old house on Calpella Street, she said, “Not much.” It was built in 1882, according to the plaque in the front window, and a couple years ago an elderly gent named Andy Brown came by with his niece to see the house in which he had grown up. She learned a [...]
There are people who don’t like to wander through cemeteries, perhaps because they want to avoid remembering that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. But for some of us, an hour or two in an old cemetery is like a magical turn in Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine. If you belong in the latter category, the new Kelley House tour of Evergreen Cemetery is [...]
When we left off last week, Footprints on the Mendocino Coast had John Simpson Ross hurrying to finish his house in Caspar before his family arrived from Canada. In mid-June of 1870, before the house was completely ready, Jane Ross and the three children (William, John, and Lizzie) and her aged parents, Ann and Robert Ralston, disembarked from the Cora down in Caspar Cove. Members of [...]
Last week in the Mendocino Community Library I was sorting through donated books and found a publication called Footprints on the Mendocino Coast with a drawing of a strangely familiar house on its cover. I recognized the house almost immediately and opened the book to learn more. Published in 1970 by the Mendocino County Historical Society, the book is the Reverend John Simpson Ross’ account of [...]
As I was strolling through Hillcrest Cemetery the other day, I counted up all the languages spoken by the people buried there. In the early days, immigrants came to the Mendocino Coast from nearly every corner of the world, leaving behind their mother lands, but bringing with them their mother tongues. Judging from the birthplaces inscribed in the tombstones in Hillcrest, you could have heard snatches [...]
The Kelley House may be one of the jewels in Mendocino’s quaint Victorian crown, but it took a lot of work over almost fifty years by many generous people to make it look this good. When Beth Stebbins and Dorothy Bear first clapped eyes on it in 1969, it was dilapidated and, in Stebbins’ words, “very unprepossessing.” A rental property since pioneer Eliza Owen Kelley followed [...]
It’s not surprising that many of the Mendocino coastal communities have embraced the concept of little free libraries. On roadsides, street corners, and front yards from Fort Bragg to Gualala, pretty wooden boxes on posts offer books for the taking. Some of the book houses are registered by their builders and sponsors with the Little Free Library organization and some are not, but all operate on [...]