A lot has been going on at the Kelley House Museum. New exhibits and research, more archival items to care for, and more visitors walking through our doors. With all this going on, we could use some help. The doors can’t be open if a friendly docent isn’t available to answer questions. Could this person be you? First response to this question we usually hear is, [...]
If you’re ever enjoying a stroll through Mendocino and see a woman in a bright, fashionable outfit leading a group of people through town, there’s a high likelihood you’ve spotted a walking tour led by Juliet Way. Juliet has led the Historic District tour, the Haunted Mendocino tour, and the Murder, She Wrote tour for years. For Juliet, her work is more than reading a script [...]
Pheobe Marsan’s wedding dress, circa 1864. Photo credit: Robert Dominy. “Tying the Knot: Bridal Fashion Unveiled” features seven pieces of historic clothing worn by brides married in Mendocino County. Three of these clothing items are not the “traditional” bridal white, as the color has not always been the preferred choice for brides in western cultures. Women frequently wore their nicest dress to walk down [...]
Earlier this year, the Mendocino Coast lost one of its most devoted artists and historians with the passing of Kevin Milligan. Kevin’s paintings captured not only the beauty of Mendocino’s historic buildings and landscapes, but also the spirit of the community he came to love so deeply. A building, a water tower, and the ocean by Kevin Milligan. In the summer of 2024, the [...]
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 [...]