June 12, 1923 - Agnes “Grace” Fisher died at her home in the San Francisco Bay Area from tuberculosis. She had first arrived in Mendocino 15 years earlier, when her husband became the pastor of the Mendocino Presbyterian Church. Grace was born in Trenton, Illinois in 1878. After spending 10 years teaching grammar school in her hometown, she married her childhood sweetheart, Reverend James Melville Fisher, [...]
Corner of Ukiah and Kasten Streets looking southeast. (Photographer: Robert Dominy) Join us tonight to celebrate the “Water Tower Wonderland” exhibit opening! Discover the beauty, ingenuity, and architecture of these iconic structures in the Kelley House Museum’s summer exhibit, “Water Tower Wonderland.” Using historic photographs, original pieces from local artists, and small-scale models, the exhibit explores the majesty and functionality of many well-known water [...]
To the average browser looking at a shelf of used books on Western Americana at Grassroots Books in Reno it wasn’t much. A weathered old publication called California Journal of Mines and Geology, Volume 49, October 1953 caught my eye because it featured an article by J.C. O’Brien titled “Mines and Mineral Resources of Mendocino County.” For $3.99 I got 50 pages of information on our [...]
City Hotel Water Tower, 2023. The bungalow built in 1917 is in the background on the left. (Photographer: Robert Dominy) The City Hotel Water Tower is the oldest standing water tower in the Mendocino Historic District. Built about 1873, this tankhouse provided water for J. E. Carlson’s City Hotel, which was located at the western end of Main Street. Carlson originally installed a windmill [...]
June 3, 1935 - Former resident Roland Smith died in Sacramento. Roland had first arrived in Mendocino as a traveling evangelist in 1921. At the time, he was visiting towns all over the state, driven by a deep desire to share the old-time Gospel with people across California. In June 1921, Roland held a series of nondenominational revival meetings at the Kelley Baptist Church (where Corners [...]
Water Tower Wonderland will be on display from June 8th to September 18th, 2023. Art by Mendocino High School sophomore, Aiden Cruz-Alcantar. There are only a few more days to see the Doin’ a Little Doodlin’ exhibit and add your own napkin art to the Kelley House Collection. Next Thursday, the Kelley House Museum will open our summer exhibition: Water Tower Wonderland. The exhibit [...]
Napoleon Bonaparte Bever & Horse Team, c. 1902. Photograph of Napoleon Bonaparte Bever with a three-horse team hauling lumber-filled railroad cars from the Mendocino Lumber Mill located on Big River Flat to the Incline where the cars would be pulled up the bluff and out to the Shipping Point. Behind Mr. Bever is the mill and its associated buildings, including the ninety-foot high, million-brick chimney that [...]
One of this year’s Mendocino Film Festival selections, “Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” is a memorial to lives long gone and an interesting approach to film making. Director Bianca Stigter takes a three-minute reel of faded 16mm color home movie footage shot in 1938 in the Jewish quarter of Nasielsk, Poland, and looks at it very closely. She identifies the people in it, and explores the Jewish [...]
May 22, 1878 - Fred Kunkel produced 70,000 bricks at his new Mendocino brick yard. The brick maker pressed locally-sourced clay into wooden molds by hand to form the bricks. The process of manufacturing a kiln full of bricks was a months-long endeavor, and the Beacon closely followed Fred's progress. Mendocino Lumber Company Mill on Big River Flat, 1890 - 1898. The third Mendocino lumber [...]
The Kelley House Museum’s yearly book sale—on Sunday, May 28th from 10 am to 3 pm—will feature a great selection of history and art books at low prices. This year, there are more than 50 books on the history of photography donated by Anne Bruhner from the collection of her late husband, sculptor Hans Bruhner. A number of them are beautiful coffee table books. Among the [...]