The Kelley House Museum is an ocean-view, historic house museum in the heart of the historic district of Mendocino, California, a picturesque town of 1,000 people.
The Kelley House Museum’s mission is to collect, preserve and share the rich history of the Mendocino Coast, and it serves its mission in two ways. Founded in 1972, it now houses the coast’s only museum-quality storage and research facility. The facility is open to visitors four days a week, and provides Web access to thousands of artifacts, photographs and documents. Genealogy and photograph requests come from all parts of the world.
The Kelley House Museum was the home of William Kelly (sp), an influential businessman in early Mendocino. Kelly as a key player in the Mendocino Lumber Company in the late 1800s, and he built this house for his family in 1861. William had the pond built and stocked so that the neighborhood children could fish.
The ocean-view home sits on an acre of gardens, with a pond and three resident geese, and serves as a historic house museum. The house, pond and water tower are listed as Category I structures within the guidelines of the Mendocino Historical Review District. The Museum is also the caretaker of façade easements for seven other historic buildings within the district.