Theresa Murray, date unknown. Kelley House photo. As Women’s History Month ends, local author Molly Dwyer’s words from 2017 still ring true— “Discovering women’s history is no easy matter … one must scour multiple sources to discover a sentence or, with luck, a paragraph acknowledging them.” Thanks to a small paragraph in an 1884 Mendocino Beacon article, we know a little more about two [...]
America Jane Moore was born on July 16, 1839 in Missouri to William H. Moore and Nancy Logan. In the late 1840s, the Moore family moved to California, settling in Sonoma County. America Jane married Commodore Cornelius Fulton Elliott, and they had five children: Florence Eleanor (1862), Ida May (1865), Elizabeth (Lizzie) (1867), Henry Harrison (1869), and Burtt Logan (1873). In 1873, America Jane divorced her [...]
James Dean was the Timothée Chalamet of his generation. If you have somehow missed Timothée’s rising star, think young Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio. So when the handsome, moody hunk arrived in Mendocino in late May of 1954 to star in Elia Kazan’s production of “East of Eden,” people took notice. It’s good that they did because it was the beginning of his meteoric film career [...]
The little coastal town of Mendocino, California, has long been a hotbed of progressive activism. In 1976, the cause was saving whales from slaughter by Russian and Japanese whaling fleets. In June, 1975, a Greenpeace patrol boat located a Russian fleet killing sperm whales off Cape Mendocino. Activists used a high-speed Zodiac inflatable to maneuver themselves between the harpooners and the whales, capturing dramatic footage of [...]
For decades, log rafts were a vital part of transporting timber down Big River to the Mendocino Mill. Francis Jackson’s book, “Big River Was Dammed,” offers a fascinating glimpse into this process, detailing the challenges of controlling logs as they made their way toward the mill pond. Philip Madera and Joe Vincent standing on a log raft in the Mendocino Mill Pond on the north [...]
MacCallum House Inn, March 2025. (Photographer: Robert Dominy) The original MacCallum House, built by J. D. Johnson in 1881 for Alexander and Daisy Kelley MacCallum on Albion Street in Mendocino, was smaller and located farther north on the lot. After her husband died in 1908, Daisy returned to Mendocino from San Francisco, where they had been living. Later that year, she had the house [...]
The questions posed most frequently by visitors to the Kelley House Museum have to do with Mendocino’s water towers: why are they here, how do they work, why are some so tall? What were once utilitarian devices that conducted water into houses have become charming and iconic objects of fascination and mystery. To satisfy the curiosity of tourists and locals alike, the Kelley House has just [...]
Fourth of July parade in Mendocino headed east down Main Street. Horses are pulling decorated wagons carrying people. Seen on the left side of the image are the Ford property's fenced gardens. Note the wooden sidewalk and the square wooden utility poles along the street. On the right side is the Kelley house property with large cypress trees along its fenced frontage. On the far right [...]
Local woodcarver Byrd Baker and Jacqueline McAndrews in 1976, standing in front of Baker's Land Rover and Whale Bus with a sign that reads, "Crusade to Save God's Whales." Jackie and Byrd were activists in the Mendocino Whale Wars environmental action movement. This photograph, taken from an elevated position, may have been made from the MacCallum House water tower on the south side of Ukiah Street. [...]
J. D. Mayhew models the Save The Whales T-shirt he designed for the Mendocino Whale War. He was aboard the Whale War boat Phyllis Cormack in San Francisco preparing to go on the 1976 anti-whaling voyage. (Photographer: Nicholas Wilson) Each year when the Mendocino Coast Whale Festival kicks off, I am filled with memories of my artist grandfather, J.D. Mayhew. He fell in love [...]