November is National American Indian Heritage Month and the Kelley House Museum is observing it by opening a new exhibit on the history and culture of the Northern Pomo Indians, who have lived on the Mendocino Coast for thousands of years. The Pomo people comprised a network of Indigenous communities that crafted canoes, baskets, and other tools from local materials. Known worldwide for their exquisite baskets, [...]
View of the remnants of the Mendocino Lumber Company's inclined tramway that ascends the bluff from Big River. On the right is the elevated bridge that brought non-vehicular travelers from the Big River Flat, up through a 50-foot gap between two houses, and onto Main Street just west of Evergreen Avenue. It was once a short county road, but in this photo it appears on the [...]
Reprinted from the February 25, 1993 Mendocino Beacon and annotated with additional information. Caspar Creek, and later the town of Caspar, were named after Siegfried Caspar, an early settler of German descent who raised cattle in the vicinity. Construction of the sawmill near where Caspar Creek meets the ocean commenced in 1861, after the owners, William Kelley, Captain Richard Rundle, and Eugene Brown purchased 5,000 acres [...]
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 [...]