So the memory of a small redwood mill and the people who lived and worked there will not be forgotten Denise Stenberg has written the book “Glen Blair” and the June 27 Sunday Afternoon with…the Stenberg’s will take place at 3:00 p.m. at the Kelley House Museum. Representing 20 years of research she and her son Michael have conducted it tells the story of a place near and dear to their hearts and home to their ancestors.
Glen Blair was six miles out of Fort Bragg and a lumber mill town for 30 years before closing. In the early days of Mendocino coast settlement Mr. Kelley, original owner of today’s Kelley House, had a sister marry Samuel Blair, who managed the Pudding Creek Lumber Company, which existed 1895 to 1903. Blair hired a young man, Alexander MacCallum, to manage the mill and that young man fell in love with Kelley’s daughter Daisy. Though the parents Kelley built a lovely home as a wedding present in 1879 for Alexander and Daisy, today’s MacCallum House, the young folks moved to Glen Blair. Daisy thought Pudding Creek was a common name and renamed the area something pretty and Scottish…Glen Blair and lived there five years with roses surrounding her home.
Renamed the Glen Blair Redwood Company when C.R. Johnson of the Union Lumber Company of Ft. Bragg bought it in 1903 it survived until 1940, though it ceased being a company town with cabins, store, school and social hall when the mill closed in 1925 and they began hauling trees to the mill in town. The mill in Glen Blair survived boom times and financial panics and had a railroad running into Ft. Bragg. A Skunk Train ride today takes passengers past Glen Blair junction, but the railroad to there was torn up in 1942 for scrap metal and the railroad bed turned into a haul road.
Denise Stenberg’s grandparents lived in Glen Blair in 1888 with three daughters and in 1938 her family bought acreage in Little Valley and up Pudding Creek and owned for 10 years the Big Orchard planted by the lumber company from 1904 to 1910 to provide fresh fruit for the cookhouse. Stenberg and son Michael lead walking tours out to Glen Blair occasionally where very little remains to be seen at once was a busy industrious place. They wanted to celebrate the place with a book before more memories are lost. Call 937-5791 for more info. Donation requested.