With the demise of the print version of this newspaper I’ve written for for over a decade I thought about what I’d like to contribute to the last issue. I write a lot about local history, so here’s what you can do to help save it.
You don’t have to be a professional historian or a journalist to preserve history, you just need to be curious. Pick a topic of interest to you and dig into it and see what you can find.
Interview an old-timer, like someone who has been in your community for their entire life.The internet has ton of questions to ask someone during an oral history interview. Type your interview up and give it to a local historical society.
Pick an event that happened locally. It doesn’t have to have occurred a century ago, it could be recent. The first thing that popped into my mind was the sheepdog trials at the fairgrounds. When did these trials start in Mendocino County? Where? By whom? Do they have anything to do with the development of the McNab sheep dog in Hopland? Find answers!
If you like botany become an expert on a local, or not so local, plant. Take Eucalyptus trees. They grow all over the county but they are Australian. How did they get to California? Who brought it and why? When? Collect that information and share it. Or choose a native wildflower, or something weird like a lichen, and learn all you can about it.
Do you like transportation? Choose a form that interests you and delve into learning more. I recently found a photo of one of the first auto stages on the 10 Mile River bridge. Was it going to Westport? How far south did it travel? What years did this bus line run? What did it cost for a ride? Did it run every day?
Are you a chef? Do you collect recipes? Have you found an old cookbook containing recipes that would baffle people today? Like Funeral Pie? Were their locally grown ingredients featured in these foods? Did folks in your area make their own cookbooks?(think “Secretos de Salsa” or “Comptche Country Cooking”).
Do you like music? Were there local bands that played at Boonville events mid-century? How many songs have been written about Mendocino County, by whom and when? The same goes for poetry. Has anyone collected poems written about Mendocino County? I have a poem about Orr Hot Springs written In 1899!
Did any local working man invent tools for specific jobs? All kinds of saws were invented to cut redwoods down, but what about farm or ranch tools? Perhaps someone invented a wonderful gizmo for tightening fence wire and we just never heard about it!
Who came up with the idea of living in houseboats on coastal rivers? I knew Houseboat Eric and Dory Dan years ago, but Fred LeValley had a houseboat on the 10 Mile River in 1959. How long have we had people living on boats, or remodeling giant redwood stumps to live in? Wasn’t there a hermit on the Navarro River who did that? What’s his story?
How about firefighting? Yes, cities had engines, firehouses, and trained paid staff, but what about rural areas? I know Civilian Conservation Corps members in their camps in the hinterlands fought wildfires in the 1930s but how did our county’s woodlands fire fighting start?
So you read this plea for saving local history and think, “Well I wouldn’t know where the hell to start!” This county is blessed with many museums, libraries and archives to search in. Be it sheep dogs, or Eucalyptus, or the development of a Peavey Logging Hook, some research institution may have information you can start with. Ukiah has the Held-Poage Library of the Historical Society of Mendocino County and the Grace Carpenter Hudson Museum. The coast has the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino and Fort Bragg has the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Coast Historical Society archives in City Hall and the Guest House Museum.
An unexpected treasure available for access on weekends are the photo albums at the state parks Greenwood Visitor Center in Elk. The Little River Improvement Club Museum has resources and, of course, the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum of the Anderson Valley Historical Society. newspapers.com, accessed from a library or museum, lets you “keyword” search every newspaper ever printed in the county that has been scanned into the database.
As a history lover I admit I am peeved that the Mendocino County Museum in Willits is not more accessible to the general public for research. I know they have materials given to them for safekeeping that have never been accessible, like Comptche Grange #671 records now locked up and away from us. Materials sit in dark storage rooms, un-accessioned (so they don’t know what they DO have) and will they EVER be available to researchers?Keeping the museum open and staffed has NEVER been a county priority.
Anyway, if information is gathered about a local history topic, type it up and offer it to a local group or museum with your name, date, and contact information on it. If the topic is railroad or logging related consider donating it to the Northwestern Pacific Railroad Historical Society, Roots of Motive Power in Willits or the Timber Heritage Association in Eureka. Every bit of local history saved now can entertain a curious mind in the future. I’m glad I’ve helped save local history and I’ll hope you’ll be glad you did too.
I’ve donated over 3,000 Mendocino county images to the Held-Poage Library in Ukiah. If you want to donate historical item this is the place. Big item should to to Willits museum but photos, documents, genealogy should go to the Held-Poage Library as they will allow access for research. The museum in Willits is much more restricted.
If the AVA was saved as a PDF file donate all of them to the Held-Poage Library in Ukiah. Great resource!
I was invited to give copies of all 76 issues of my paper /Memo/ to a woman at the Kelley House. I brought them in big carboard boxes. They said everything was going to a museum or archive somewhere, but I don’t remember where, and it was so long ago. Now I’d like to know. I have a suitcase full of later issues of the /Mendocino Commentary/. I have the text files –in WordStar 4 and later 5.5 format. And the titles and artwork are in Instant Artist For DOS format. Think how cool it would be to have the actual papers digitized, page by page, yellowed paper and all.
And I still have crates of VHS tapes of all the 2-hour-long weekly Radio *Free Earth variety teevee shows from 1986 into 1989. Lots of local musicians and artists and characters. It would be great to have those all digitized. And the theater shows and choirs and events I shot over the years. Much of it is scattered to the winds. A tape or disk in a drawer in someone’s attic with the playbill or without.