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Mendocino is an unincorporated coastal community and census-designated place (CDP) in Mendocino County, California, located about 10 miles south of Fort Bragg at an elevation of 154 feet.

The name traces to Cape Mendocino, 85 miles to the north, which early Spanish navigators named in honor of Antonio de Mendoza, the first Viceroy of New Spain.

Before 1850 a Pomo settlement named Buldam stood near the site, on the north bank of the Big River.

The 1850 wreck of the ship Frolic near Point Cabrillo sparked the redwood timber trade here, and Mendocino was founded in 1852 as a logging community for the Mendocino Lumber Company, originally named Meiggsville after promoter Henry Meiggs.

Mendocino Presbyterian Church on Main Street, dedicated on July 5, 1868, is one of the oldest continuously used Protestant churches in California and is California Historical Landmark #714.

Most of the town was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 as the Mendocino and Headlands Historic District.

The town is wrapped by Mendocino Headlands State Park, where grassy bluffs drop to the Pacific and the Big River meets the ocean at Big River Beach just south of town.

Mendocino's revival as an artists' colony began in the late 1950s, when artist Bill Zacha founded the Mendocino Art Center.

Mendocino famously stood in for the fictional Cabot Cove, Maine, in the CBS series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996); nine of its 264 episodes were filmed in town and Mendocino exteriors appeared throughout the series, while Jessica Fletcher's house is now the Blair House bed and breakfast.

The 2020 census counted just 932 residents in the Mendocino CDP, 96.2 percent of whom lived in households.