by Tonia Hurst Living on the coast has its advantages and such was the case on the morning of October 17, 1924, when the mighty USS Shenandoah flew over Mendocino en route to Fort Lewis, Washington. The first of four U.S. Navy rigid airships, the Shenandoah was built between 1922 and 1923 in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and modeled after the Zeppelin L-49. Her infrastructure was built of Duralumin, a copper and aluminum alloy. The first airship to use helium as its lifting gas,[... see full page]

A membership to the Kelley House Museum is a wonderful holiday gift. Memberships start at $35.00/year for the whole family. Put someone you care about on the path to learning our local history. Click here for a membership form. We’ll send you or the recipient (whichever you prefer) a lovely card letting them know of your gift.[... see full page]

Patrons of the Kelley House Museum’s speakers series, “A Sunday Afternoon With . . .” will have the opportunity of hearing Sarah Bodnar and Gowan Batist, speak on their year of eating locally.  Their experiment, although it took place in 2013, fit so well with our current exhibit on the history of procuring food for work and families of the North Coast; that we invited them to share their experiences of that year with the community once again.  The Kelley[... see full page]

by Tonia Hurst On a quiet morning in October of 1900, the steam schooner, Sunol, burned to the waterline while at anchor in Little River. Built in 1890 in Alameda by the Pacific Shipping Company of San Francisco, the Sunol was 132’ long with a 33’ beam and a carrying capacity of 258 tons—the equivalent of 375,000 board feet of timber. It took just 68 days to build her from the time her keel was laid to the day she rolled down[... see full page]

By Katy Tahja As the fall season returns, our thoughts may also turn to harvests, family meals and food shared with friends. In keeping with such thoughts, we’d like to draw your attention to the cookbook sitting on Eliza Kelly’s china cupboard in the kitchen of the Kelley House Museum. Published in 1892, it’s stamped as belonging to the private library of “Mrs. Alexander McCallum of Glen Blair,” Eliza’s daughter. This book is an eye opener! “Science in the Kitchen”, ha[... see full page]

We all have to die sometime.  If you’d like to see how some of your fellow representatives of humanity addressed this fact, and hear their stories, consider joining the Cemetery Tour, offered by the Kelley House Museum on Saturday, October 1st, beginning at 6:00 p.m.  Your tour guide at the cemetery will be none other than “J.D. Johnson.” Who was J.D. Johnson (note use of past tense, he died in Fort Bragg in 1927)?  He was that person to whom many[... see full page]