Kelley House Holiday Gift Guide - For Your Favorite Pen Pal Kelley House Water Tower Notecards - $15 Greetings from Mendocino! This beautiful watercolor painting of the Kelley House water tower by local artist Suzi Long is reprinted on a set of five 4” x 6” notecards. Built in 1886, the Kelley water tower is one of the last of these majestic structures still standing. Buy [...]
December 5, 1914 - A group of young men in Caspar organized the Sequoia Band, under the guidance of director John Murray. Sequoia Band of Caspar, c. 1915. Top row L-R: Elbert Montgomery, unidentified, Juel Jensen, unidentified, Ragnar Wahlstrom, unidentified, unidentified. Front row: Lester Moody, Jack Casey, Bill Brady, unidentified, unidentified, Bill Nylander, Dave Brinzing, Henry Van Ahnen. (Gift of Vince Johnson) This band [...]
Kelley House Holiday Gift Guide - History Books Make Great Gifts! TEN IN A TOTE HISTORY SET - $120 Save time and money while bestowing the gift of knowledge! We’ve bundled ten of our bestselling history books into our attractive water tower tote bag and made the entire gift set available at 50% off. For just $120 you’ll have eleven different gifts to bestow on friends [...]
December 2, 1925 - Nineteen-year-old Fay Lanphier, recently crowned Miss America, arrived at the Mendocino home of her aunt, Jennie Swanson, for a visit. Fay was born in Elk on December 12, 1905 to Casper and Emily Lanphier. When she was a young girl, the Lanphier family moved to Mendocino, and Fay and her siblings attended the first Mendocino Grammar School on the corner of Pine [...]
Kelley House Holiday Gift Guide - For Art and Water Tower Lovers WATER TOWERS OF MENDOCINO - LIMITED EDITION PRINT Wow someone special with this gorgeous print depicting some of Mendocino's iconic (and still standing) water towers. Limited, signed and numbered prints by local artist Michelle Noe. $85.00 This fantastical collage depicts 15 of Mendocino’s iconic water towers entwined with some of the town’s unique flora. [...]
Bever House, c. 1932. (Kelley House Collection) Bever House, 2023. (Photographer: Robert Dominy) These two images, taken about 90 years apart, show the Bever House on Little Lake Street across from the Art Center in Mendocino. This home was built in the 1880s for brothers Benjamin and Samuel Bever. They were born in Bates County, Missouri in the 1840s. Their father, [...]
November 27, 1964 - The old blacksmith shop on the northwest corner of Lansing and Little Lake streets (where Century 21 is located today) was demolished. According to the Beacon, the big building “went down with a crash when Clarence Ponts made his final attack on it with his big cat.” The building had its beginnings in November 1882, when blacksmith and wheelwright George Hall built [...]
Enjoy unobstructed views of the Mendocino Bay from your private suite at the top of a water tower. The Kelley House Museum is auctioning off a package that includes two nights at the boutique MacCallum House Inn. The three story water tower sleeps four people and features a luxurious bath and sauna. Place the highest bid online by 5:00 PM PST on December 5th, and you’ll [...]
November 25, 1924 - Frank J. Mendosa passed away at his home on Little Lake Road at the age of 73. Born on the island of Flores in the Azores, Frank left Portugal at a young age, joining the crew of a whaling vessel and making several trips around Cape Horn. In his early twenties, he landed in Boston, where he worked for a short time [...]
Nannie Escola, one of the first chroniclers of Mendocino coast lore, left the Kelley House notebooks full of newspaper clippings and her handwritten notes about local happenings. What follows are some tidbits of interest about Comptche, 12 miles inland, gleaned from those three-ring binders. In the fall of 1884, Newman E. Hoak showed off a gloria mundi apple weighing 29 oz. and a pippin weighing 18 [...]