Mendocino Presbyterian Church

The church is turned the wrong way for today's town. Its door faces the ocean, toward the Old Coast Road that once climbed from the Big River flats, so Main Street sees its back, and the 1959 bronze stands behind it on Ukiah Street. Albert Maxwell built it from redwood milled in town to a design by S. C. Bugbee and Son, and the sanctuary ceiling is framed like an upturned ship's hull, in a town that lived by its ships. Jerome B. Ford gave half of the $10,000 cost.

What the plaque says

Mendocino Presbyterian Church This is one of the oldest Protestant churches in continuous use in California. Organized as the Presbyterian Church on November 6, 1859, the building, constructed of redwood, was dedicated on July 5, 1868. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 714 Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the Native Sons of the Golden West, November 7, 1959.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Point Cabrillo Light Station — 3.3 mi
  A 1909 light on the headland where a China trader's wreck set off the Mendocino lumber boom.
• Jug Handle Ecological Staircase — 5.0 mi
  Five steps up from the beach, each about a hundred thousand years older than the last, ending in a forest of century-old trees no taller than a person.
• Skunk Train (California Western Railroad) — 9.6 mi
  A logging railroad from 1885, named for the smell of the motorcars it put on in 1925.
• Glass Beach — 10 mi
  Sixty years of Fort Bragg's garbage, ground down by the surf into a beach its visitors have nearly picked clean.

More markers nearby

• Temple of Kwan Tai — 0.2 mi
• Fort Bragg — 9.6 mi
• Point Arena Light Station — 24 mi