After coming all of this way and staying in Mendicino County for a while, we finally visited Mendicino proper. It is a cute little town. Lots of nice shops to visit, great places to eat and many things to see. One of the main attractions is from the TV series Murder She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury. This mystery series has used many locations throughout the town for its exterior shots. The pictured Blair House stands in for Ms. Lansbury character’s house.

Back in the day, when she was still a struggling actor and living in LA, she had a teenage daughter. At that time, in the sixties, she was not pleased with some of her daughter’s choice in friends. Ms. Lansbury felt that she had fallen in with a bad crowd. Maybe it was the detective’s instinct that she so often portrayed or maybe it was just a mother’s intuition, but she decided to intervene and moved with her daughter back to England. This ended the threat to her daughter, which was good, because the guy that frightened her the most was Charlie Manson.

An interesting feature of Mendicino is its water towers. They are endemic to the area. They date back to before the advent of city water, when everyone had to provide their own water. Many of them have been repurposed. The pictured one while still looking authentic, now houses a nice jewelry store. Many others have been totally redone, while there are still a few awaiting future redevelopment.