Making History Blog

The current exhibit at the Kelley House Museum, “Tying the Knot: Bridal Fashion Unveiled,” showcases beautiful wedding dresses, photographs, and artwork illustrating Mendocino bridal fashion through the years. Among the couples featured are Joseph Lucio (Joe) Lenhares and Mamie Jerome, whose wedding took place at the Catholic Church in Mendocino on January 10, 1909. Their marriage lasted more than sixty years and became part of the [...]

With the 2026 Wimbledon Tennis Championships wrapped up, let’s look at where tennis was played in Mendocino. Kelley House has documented five tennis courts in town, starting in 1892 at the Morgan residence on Little Lake Street. At present, this is the site of the Art Center, but from 1890 to 1956, the town’s only bona fide mansion occupied most of this site. It had a [...]

In the first season of the Mendocino Music Festival 40 years ago, there were eight concerts in a small yellow and black striped tent on the headlands. All were classical music, four performed by an orchestra and four by a chamber group. This season, which begins on July 11th, there will be 27 concerts performed in a spacious white tent by a mix of musicians playing [...]

Mendocino has a long tradition of Independence Day celebrations, very traditional in the good old days, and rather idiosyncratic in recent years. Regardless of where the festivities have fallen on the flag-waving spectrum, however, all of them have shared certain elements: eating, drinking, marching, and blowing things up. As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, we are also marking [...]

Walter Jackson playing a mandolin, 1910. Walter Arnold Jackson was born October 7, 1888 in Washington Territory, fourteen months before Washington became a state. In 1885, his parents, William A. and Harriet Jane (Wymer) Jackson “took up” a timber claim about 20 miles west of Sequim, Washington Territory, where Jackson relatives living nearby assured them opportunities were good. Prior to living in Washington, William [...]

The facts of the case are mostly undisputed. The only question that remains unanswered is whether saloon owner J. W. Barton was intoxicated when he fired his gun at Joseph M. Garvin, missing his head “by the fraction of an inch.” Joe was the proprietor of “Mendocino’s Cheap Cash Store,” a general merchandise establishment on Lansing Street, located where GoodLife Café & Bakery is today. Between [...]

CATTLE INVADE GARAGE - this odd headline appeared on the front page of the October 13, 1928 Mendocino Beacon. The story goes on to say, “A band of some 60 head of dairy cows being driven up the coast were going through Mendocino and when passing the S. & E. Garage, spied the big open doors, and evidently taking it for a barn, they rushed in, [...]

Tying the Knot is open now at the Kelley House Museum Travel back in time and down the aisle at the Kelley House Museum during “Tying the Knot: Bridal Fashion Unveiled,” which opens June 4, 2026 and runs through August 31, 2026. This exhibit features archival photographs, artwork, and seven pieces of historic clothing worn by Mendocino brides from the mid-1860s to 1978. This [...]

The Kelley House Museum recently accepted a donation of items related to the Kelley family, passed down to a descendant of Otis Kelley, William and Eliza’s youngest child. Most of the items relate to the first generation of Kelleys born in Mendocino, primarily Daisy MacCallum and Elise Drexler.  Daisy was a dedicated diarist. When we accessioned a collection of 27 diaries written by Kelley family women [...]