The History of SCP Mendocino Inn and Farm

The history of SCP Mendocino Inn and Farm, formerly Glendeven Inn and Inn at the Cobblers Walk, begins with two brothers’ search for gold and a courageous family’s trip by land and sea from coast to coast.

Isaiah Stevens built the farmhouse, which is now home to guest rooms overlooking the llama pen with ocean views in the distance.

Emily Etta Stevens Pullen, his fourth daughter, kept a detailed diary beginning in 1864, when she and her family made the daring voyage from Maine to Little River, California. She continued writing until 1935, just two years before her death. From Etta's diary and the work of the Kelley House Museum, we have an interesting account of the period around the turn of the 20th century in Little River.

In 1856, Silas Coombs and his brother came from Maine to California in search of gold in the Sierras. They looked to California's vast redwood forests when it became obvious that hardships in the gold fields would bring limited success.

Familiar with the lumber trade from the forests of Maine, they came west, where they found work with the Albion Lumber Company. Shortly after their arrival, they claimed a large tract of land two miles north of Albion and signed a logging contract with the operator of the Albion Mill. The brothers began to build capital for their own venture, a mill at Little River, and in 1863 they returned to Maine to arrange for relatives and friends to join them in Little River. In 1864, Isaiah Stevens and his second wife, Rebecca Coombs Stevens (Silas's sister), and three of their children (including Etta) left their native Maine to claim acres of virgin redwood forests on the northern California coast.

They departed by ship from Boston, sailed south to Panama, traveled by land across the isthmus, boarded another ship, and sailed north around Baja. After an arduous six weeks, they arrived in San Francisco on July 22. From there, they continued by stagecoach for an additional three days to reach their uncertain but hopeful future south of the new lumber town of Mendocino. In the spring of 1865, the Stevens family completed the tiny cabin that can be seen in the photograph, just to the right (east), of the main farmhouse, which was completed two years later.