How many readers are aware that Southern Pacific Railroad owned a good chunk of the land between the Albion and Navarro Rivers out to Comptche? No, the company wasn’t planning to build an extension of their railroad on this land…they needed timber. Did you know Southern Pacific Railroad once owned a chunk of the county and would be happy to sell logged-over lands in 1940? Shown: [...]
Recently, the Kelley House received an email from a woman named Heather requesting any history we might have on a house located at 11275 Lansing Street. We love questions like this, as we’ve been collecting information on structures and the people who occupied them for almost 50 years, and we’re eager to share what we have. But we were stumped. The inquirer called it “the McCloud [...]
We want to share once again some excerpts from the oral history project that was created back in 2000 by the students of Ryan Olson Day’s Options Class at the Mendocino Middle School. With the help of Steven Jordan and a grant obtained by Deena Zarlin, they made audio recordings of their interviews with 12 “Old Timers,” who told the kids what it was like living [...]
The staff at the Kelley House Museum never cease to be amazed by the material the public presents to us as gifts. Take Auggie Heeser’s book, “First Lessons in Arithmetic” by William J. Milne, Ph. D., LL D. given to us by former Mendocino resident Deborah White. A twelve-year old Auggie Heeser in 1889 and his math textbook. (Kelley House Museum, from the collection of Robert [...]
Christmas is going to be different this year. 2020 has been a difficult year of anxiety, separation, and loss and with the holidays, we should be looking forward to getting together with friends and loved ones to celebrate the season. Tintype image of Richard T. Bourns, a civil war soldier, dressed in a Union Army uniform posing against a painted backdrop of a Civil War camp, [...]
Over the past few weeks or so the history of libraries on the Mendocino Coast has been explored in this Kelley House column. Here is the last segment on library growth on the South Coast. How do you move a Library? One book at a time in a human chain from one location to another in Pt. Arena as the Coast Community Library book collection moved [...]
The latest chapter in the library history of Mendocino began back in 1974, when the Mendocino Study Club, keeper of the community’s lending library, was faced once again with the task of finding a new home for its club rooms, and also for its ever-growing collection of books. As we covered in an earlier column, the Club rooms in the much loved Kellieowen Hall, on the [...]
Our previous column bookmarked the story of Mendocino’s many libraries at the part where the venerable Mendocino Study Club has become the patron for the town’s bibliophiles. Daisy Kelley MacCallum in 1952, the year before she died, sitting on the sun porch of her home on Albion Street in Mendocino. In 1938, the Club unexpectedly needed another place to hold their meetings. Since 1924, they had [...]
It is the 1930s, the Great Depression has started, and we begin another chapter in the story of libraries. Girl Scout Intermediate Bookbinding Badge from the 1930s, showing an open book. Our two previous articles recounted earlier reading rooms and libraries on Mendocino’s Main Street, and then in the building on the corner of Ukiah and Lansing Street. Since its construction by W. H. Kelley in [...]
This is the second segment in a series of articles about the libraries in Mendocino. The previous column took us from 1883, when the first library opened in the Good Templars’ Hall on south Main Street, to 1909. That year the county went “dry” and the libraries sponsored by these temperance organizations had completed their mission. The Public Library and Reading Room in the early 1900s [...]