On October 15, 1879, four gunmen, intent on robbing the county sheriff, ambushed a posse of civilians in the woods east of Mendocino. Store owner Tom Dollard was murdered on the spot. Townsman Jim Nichols…
Posts published by “Malcolm Macdonald”
October, 1879 — Four men rode into the woods east of Mendocino. They unsaddled their horses then set up camp in an old hay shed. There they waited for their leader to bring supplies and…
John Fleming Wheeler served the town of Mendocino as dentist for less than a year and a half in 1878-1879. His name lives on because of his central role in the most notorious crime in…
John Fleming Wheeler arrived in Mendocino City in the summer of 1878. He set up a dentist office within the Norton Hotel on Main Street. For a short while previously he had practiced dentistry in…
Last time we explored the details of the May 1856 beating of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. The attacker was South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks who used a walking cane to repeatedly strike Sumner. Brooks was…
Preston Brooks entered the United States Senate chamber with a gutta percha walking cane in hand. The cane stood approximately waist high next to the thirty-six-year-old South Carolinian. The head of the cane was topped…
The Mendocino Coast Hospitality Center in Fort Bragg receives hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in government funding. That's tax dollars from the public. Yet, in these Covid times the Hospitality Center Board of Directors…