Temple of Kwan Tai

No state plaque stands here; the small bronze set in the path is a private one, and it claims 1854 behind a garbled circa. The dates quarrel. Family memory, carried by Grace Hee Yee, says 1852, and a state architect's report put the timber in the early 1850s. The paper starts later: the lot sold to Chinese buyers in 1867, a deed to Lee Sing John in 1871, and the Beacon reporting an opening in November 1882. Hee descendants kept the temple through all of it, gave it to a nonprofit in 1995 and reopened it restored in 2001.

What the plaque says

Temple Kwan Tai California State Landmark #927 C.A. 1854

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) — 9.7 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

• Mendocino Presbyterian Church — 0.2 mi
• Fort Bragg — 9.6 mi
• Point Arena Light Station — 24 mi