A history of Mendocino,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Mendocino from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Prior to 1850, a Pomo settlement named Buldam was located near Mendocino on the north bank of the Big River. In 1850, the ship Frolic was wrecked a few miles north of Mendocino, at Point Cabrillo, and the investigation of the wreck by agents of Henry Meiggs sparked the development of the timber industry in the area. Mendocino itself was founded in 1852 as a logging community for what became the Mendocino Lumber Company, and was originally named "Meiggsville" after Meiggs. The town was also known as "Big River" Meiggstown, and "Mendocino City", before the current name was settled on. The first post office opened in 1858. Many of the town's early settlers were New Englanders, as was true of many older Northern California logging towns. Portuguese fishermen from the Azores also settled in the area, as did immigrants from Canton Province in China, who built the Taoist Temple of Kwan Tai in …
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Mendocino’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewPoint at Mendocino City, where th…, 1866: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Mendocino
See all 3 →Mendocino, decade by decade
1990s
2 historic places in Mendocino
2 places in Mendocino are on the National Register of Historic Places, the country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
Where they are
When they were listed
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Point at Mendocino City, where the vessels are loaded with lumber (1866) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (4) and the Library of Congress (2). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.