McNear: Mendocino’s local prohibition prompted the opening of Mendosa’s General Merchandise

The Mendosas are one of the many Portuguese families that made their way to Mendocino from the Azores Islands in the late nineteenth century. The family patriarch, Francisco Jose Mendonca, was born March 15, 1851 and became a whaler as a young man, sailing around Cape Horn several times before landing in Boston, where he worked as a longshoreman. He soon made his way to California.

Frank Mendosa, as he came to be known, first worked in Caspar and then in Mendocino as a lumberman. He began saving up money, enough to purchase passage to California for his father and three sisters. In 1882, Frank and Joseph Lopps jointly purchased land on Little Lake Road in East Mendocino, splitting the property and building their homes there.