By Shirley Streshinsky

The coastline still enchants artists.

James Dean got to Mendocino a few years before I did. He came in 1954 for the filming of East of Eden because Monterey, the real setting, could no longer pass for a California seaside town of 1917, but Mendocino could. When I came along in 1961 the old coastal town 120 miles north of San Francisco still looked late 19th century; weatherworn Victorians and New England church spires stretched out along a headland wrapped on three sides by the sea. Main Street, with its collection of board-and-batten buildings, faced a pasture where cows grazed between the street and cliffs that dropped off into the sea.

Old Portuguese men spent the day on benches on Main Street near the Mendocino Hotel; the wooden sidewalks were riddled with tiny holes, like cleat marks, and so was the floor of the bar in the hotel lobby. The bartender told me the holes had been poked by lumberjacks' boots. By then, the redwood forests were dwindling and the town's mill had closed. Mendocino was a fading remnant, a forgotten New England–style village on a windblown coast, visual high drama.

On that 1961 trip, I met a young artist/builder named Bill Zacha, who wanted to turn Mendocino into a center for the arts. Respected California artists moved north to live and work there, and in 1962 Look magazine did a story about Zacha titled "Young Man Saves a Dying Town." Over the next two decades, I made the drive to Mendocino a number of times and watched the art colony grow. Zacha's Art Center became a resounding success, offering classes that attracted creative people from all over the country. Somewhere along the way, the Portuguese men withdrew from their benches on Main Street, and the old wood sidewalks were replaced with new boards. Galleries took root; tourists followed and some of them bought old houses and turned them into vacation homes. The Men-docino Hotel was doing a sparkling business and some grand old houses were turned into B&Bs.

An old barn adjoins the MacCallum House.

When word got out that the headlands were going to be developed by their lumber company owners, artist Emmy Lou Packard mobilized a citizens' group which succeeded in preserving the open space that surrounds the town. Eventually—in 1972—the Mendocino headlands became a state park and the entire town was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its appearance, familiar to television viewers as Cabot Cove, Maine, in Angela Lansbury's Murder, She Wrote, is not about to change; the Men-docino Historical Review Board meets monthly to make sure of it. Chairman Bart Grimes says, "The state agreed to swap forest land to acquire the headlands as a park only if the county would protect the historic architecture and character of the town." The state park people even suggested that local merchants dress up in period costume reminiscent of an old logging town. The townspeople would have none of it. But keeping the town a living community would prove to be a delicate balancing act, especially when by 1995 tourism topped timber as the county's No. 1 moneymaker.

Last winter, after a hiatus of almost 20 years, my husband and I returned to see what time and tourism had wrought. Approaching from the south, we saw Mendocino spread out before us exactly as it was that first time. It was not until I got into town that I began to notice changes. All of the houses were painted soft, blending colors; empty lots were free of old car carcasses and there were no more tie-dyed curtains. It was as if Martha Stewart had been turned loose with instructions to create a "Victorian country ambience." Gardens had a planned casualness; upscale was written all over the place. A night at Blair House B&B, Lansbury's home in Murder, She Wrote, costs from $80 to $225, depending on the room and season. In 1961, I had paid $8 for a room in the Mendocino Hotel with a rose chenille bedspread and a bath down the hall. That room, considerably gussied up, now goes for $85. I began to worry that tourism might be draining the lifeblood out of the old lumber town.

We arrived at the height of crab season and checked into the Packard House, a grand Carpenter Gothic built in 1878 on what is now called Mansion Row. Our room was beyond elegant, with a tiled jet tub and steam shower. That evening we walked over to the Kelley House Museum (1860) for a party to kick off the first "Mendocino Crab & Wine Days," and—mirabile dictu—right into what felt like the beating heart of the town, with local fishermen and their families gathered to talk Dungeness. We would have stayed all evening and learned a lot more about crabbing had we not had reservations at Stevenswood, a fine dining establishment that might have been in San Francisco, and where even the dinner tip for two can top $25. The next morning at breakfast (bountiful) we met a couple who had dropped by the Kelley House as well, but had found the gathering "too down-home" for their tastes. I sighed, reminded myself that people travel with different expectations, and set out to walk Main Street, joining a Saturday procession that filed in and out of art galleries, bookstores, and pricey shops offering fan-cy gardening tools and handmade baby clothes. Then I wandered down to Portuguese Flats on the western edge of town where I encountered one spunky old house that made me laugh out loud. It was elaborately decorated with abalone shells and all manner of beachcomber flotsam, with a few hubcaps, Halloween decorations, and flags tossed in. Just like the night before at the Kelley house, I could feel the pulse of the old town throbbing in my ears.

An excellent place to catch up on local gossip traditionally has been Ole's Bar in Little River Inn, a consummate Vic-torian two miles south of town. Built by lumberman Silas Coombs in 1853, it was turned into an inn by his granddaughter and her husband, Cora and Ole Hervilla, and their children run it today. The Inn has been spiffed up since the days when James Dean hung out here (and Ole tossed him out of the dining room for putting his feet on the table). We checked into a commodious room, opened the drapes for a view of the storm-tossed sea, lit a fire in the fireplace, and from the video library borrowed one of my favorites: The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming (filmed in Mendocino in l966). We found that we still laughed in all the same places, that the film—like the town—had aged well.

A stroll through town takes you past many preserved old structures, including some dating back to the 1870s.

Has tourism spoiled Mendocino? Yes, if spoiled means pampered, yuppified, pricey. You could argue that tourism has helped save a pristine example of California history, and provided jobs. Prices drop considerably in the winter, especially on weekdays. (The average daily high in summer is 65 degrees; in winter, it is 64.) And there is much to do on this coast that costs nothing at all. From November to March, some 3,500 gray whales pass by the headlands. The town is surrounded by state parks with wondrous hiking trails—Van Damme to the south, Russian Gulch to the north, both fern-filled redwood places that only nature is allowed to decorate.

Will Mendocino eventually exist more for outsiders than for the people who live there and in the process become an ossified historical town without any life of its own? Possibly. The population—1,008—is stable and aging. Houses in town are considerably more expensive than in neighboring parts of the county. But the art community flourishes, continuing to set the tone, along with three local theater groups, and a popular music festival in the summer, mostly run by volunteers. Young families, especially cybercommuters, are beginning to move into the area, which may bode well for the high-wire act required to keep a popular tourist destination a viable place to live.