December 18, 1964 Holiday Shopping Advertisement in the Mendocino Beacon for Matson’s Men’s Wear Nowadays it’s trendy (and logical) to “shop locally,” but decades ago that’s what everyone did for the holidays and the merchants who advertised in the Mendocino Beacon and Fort Bragg Advocate-News wanted readers to know everything their hearts desired was waiting for them right here on the coast. In 1929 the Post Office Store in Fort Bragg (a new business in an old post office facility?) wanted parents[... see full page]

Fedora "Cookie" Urbani, age 10, playing her clarinet at Christmas in 1940. (Kelley House Museum – Fedora “Cookie” Holmes Collection) There’s a lot going on at the Kelley House Museum! Dolls! Our Holiday Exhibit is now up, and among the antique toys we pulled from the archives you’ll find three dolls that Daisy Kelley MacCallum used to played with, right here in her childhood home on Albion Street. This year they have new playmates. Several Victorian-era girl dolls have come to visit,[... see full page]

Lumber Schooner Maxim, one of painter David Thimgan’s artistic subjects, on Caspar beach in 1884. The Coast Road can be seen winding down the hill on the right, and circling around the base of the hill behind the beached schooner. (Kelley House Museum, Emery Escola Collection #1995-001-27) Sometimes a researcher can find a link to Mendocino coastal history when you least expect it. Sorting archive materials at the Kelley House Museum I discovered artist David Thimgan. In a 1994-95 winter issue of[... see full page]

Back in 2000, students of Ryan Olson Day’s Options Class at the Mendocino Middle School created an oral history project with the help of Steve Jordan and a grant obtained by Deena Zarlin. They made audio recordings of their interviews with twelve “Old Timers,” who told these children what it was like back in the day. Two decades later, the transcripts of these stories have been pulled from the Kelley House Museum vault, excerpted, and published now for the first[... see full page]

Coach belonging to the North Coast Stage Line, which ran between Willits and Fort Bragg. Bench seats were very basic and the canvas sides could be rolled down if there was inclement weather. (Kelley House Museum Collection) Many docents here at the Kelley House Museum love stagecoaches. Whether traveling in them or robbing them, this form of early transportation produced many adventurous stories that were published in the Mendocino Beacon. Stages arrived via the primitive roads to Mendocino from the southeast[... see full page]

This vintage Halloween postcard by the Whitney Company illustrates the popularity of gate theft. From the personal collection of Tonia Hurst. Halloween came to America in the 1840s with Irish immigrants whose ancestors knew it by its Celtic name, Samhain. A time to light bonfires, wear costumes, and drive away evil spirits, the holiday captured popular imagination.  Jack-o'-lantern, already an American novelty, replaced the carved turnips of yore while fortune-telling games decreed that a girl might discover the name of her[... see full page]