About Us:
Located off Main Street and Patrick’s Point Drive at the entry way to the charming coastal village of Trinidad, is a newly rehabilitated circa 1899-1900 Victorian Italianate bungalow. The Sangster-Watkins-Underwood home, donated by the family of Ernie and Gwyneth Susan, descendants of the original owners, was moved from its site near Trinidad State Beach to land donated by Glenn and Janis Saunders in September, 2006.
The beautifully renovated home, with five exhibit rooms, opened to the public in 2009 and it is now surrounded by two gardens. In front is the Historic Garden, with plants that would have grown in the original house garden, and behind the Museum is the Native Plant Garden featuring a collection of plants and landscapes native to the Trinidad area.
Native American exhibits include the redwood canoe carved from one log by Axel Lindgren, exquisite Indian baskets, and a magnificent mural painted by Susan Morton of the old Tsurai Village site above Old Home Beach. Other rooms feature Natural History, Historic Photographs, and a Heritage Room.
The Trinidad Museum was founded in 1983 and was housed in a small, inconspicuous gear shed until the move in 2009. Trinidad’s rich cultural and natural history, with emphasis on Tsurai Village, Yurok traditions, European contact, the Gold Rush, whaling, fishing, shipping, logging, transportation, Trinidad Head light house, and commerce, is now being told in a Trinidad home which is an historic exhibit itself.
