Reprinted from the January 21, 1993 Mendocino Beacon For our mill here on Big River, the first large redwoods were cut down entirely with double-bitted axes, and cut into logs with axes. In those very early logging days it might have taken two experienced men a week to bring down a big tree, including a few days to prepare a bed or cushion of smaller trees [...]
While the Mendocino Coast has seen many shipwrecks along its shores, and enjoyed salvaging the cargo that washed up, the sinking of the “SS Dorothy Wintermote” in September of 1938 stands out in the memories of the locals. A veteran of Pacific coastal service, with more than 15 years of traffic on her record, the steamer was carrying a cargo of large appliances, gas cylinders, pharmacy [...]
Excerpted and annotated from “Mendocino’s Hotels & Saloons,” by Dorothy Bear and Beth Stebbins, Mendocino Historical Review, June, 1980. Big River House was a hotel at the west end of Main Street, just west of the present Zacha Building [Now the Healing Arts Building]. [The three-story hotel sat on the northeast corner of Main and Woodward Streets. Mendocino Jams and Jellies and Mendocino Sandpiper occupy the [...]
A hand-colored promotional postcard created for the Fort Bragg Drug Store showing buildings along Lansing Street in Mendocino in 1906. The photograph from which this postcard was made was probably taken from the second floor of the Occidental Hotel, located at the southeast corner of the intersection of Lansing and Main Streets. The building on the lower left side of the image (and which fronts Main [...]
Reprinted from the November 15, 1984 Mendocino Beacon Few sailing ships or steamers plied their trade between San Francisco and Anchorage without occasionally dropping anchor off the mouth of Big River, taking on passengers or cargo to fill the hold when Noyo Harbor failed to fill it. Nearly all of them were photographed and identified at one time or another lying off the Mendocino Headlands, and [...]
The Johnson-Stauer building, situated on the northeast corner of Lansing and Ukiah Streets in Mendocino, is steeped in local history, reflecting the evolution of the town’s commercial and social life. In 1902, master carpenter J. D. Johnson, who owned the property, demolished an old barn on the site, which had most recently been used as a blacksmith shop. In its place, he constructed the current two-story [...]
Robert Foster Andrews in his later years. (Florence Andrews Collection, Kelley House Museum) In 1984, the Kelley House supplied local historian Robert Winn with material he used in his College of the Redwoods course, “New England in Mendocino.” Dorothy Bear shared some of that information in the column below, which was first published in the November 8, 1984 Mendocino Beacon. The best sources in [...]
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from walking around the charming town of Mendocino, it’s that the town itself is alive. It breathes. It moves. Mendocino even talks to us. As I take people around town and tell them about the haunted houses, phantom horses, and the hotel guests that refuse to leave after 150 years, I realize that the ghosts also talk to us. They [...]
On display at the Ford House on Main Street is a meticulously detailed scale model of Mendocino as it appeared in the late 19th century. Created by master craftsman Lennard "Len" Peterson between February 1989 and December 1990, the model spans a four-by-eight-foot base, with a scale of 1:384 (3/64 inches to the foot). It features 358 buildings, including hotels, businesses, homes, and outhouses, alongside 34 [...]
Coming home from a hard, day-long job, it’s likely that you want to sink onto your couch and pour yourself a beer. The loggers of Mendocino felt the same way 150 years ago. After chopping, milling, and shipping tons of redwood trees, sipping a cold one was a perfect way to relax and forget about the limbs you almost lost. Luckily, the area was not short [...]