Mignon "Minnie" Stoddard Lilley was a homesteader, pioneer, and teacher in early Mendocino County. From 1904 to 1936, Stoddard taught in a one room schoolhouse in the Andersonia/Percy area, and for many years she used a horse-drawn buggy to pick up some of her students and bring them to school. In 1904, she set out to homestead a claim on the South Fork Eel River and described her first night alone in her cabin as having "a prayer on my lips and pistol in my hand." She married William Lilley in 1905. In 1925, they purchased a 55-acre parcel of redwood trees because it contained the "Fraternal Monarch," a 301-foot-tall tree with a burned out center that is now known as "The World Famous Tree House." When construction of the Redwood Highway began in 1929, the Lilleys deeded land for the project to the state for 10 dollars, and convict laborers working on the road lived in the Tree House during construction. With the subsequent rise in tourism in the Redwood Country, Minnie opened the first gift shop in the area in the center of her Tree House. She died on March 8, 1947, and was buried among her beloved trees according to her wishes.