This Week in Marin History
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January 2009

This land is our land

In Jan. 1934, the Marin Journal wrote an editorial of deep concern: “Our picnic spots are nearly gone. ‘No Trespassing’ signs are posted all over. We must act if we believe in building for the future. Papermill Creek, inviting bay beaches, from Tiburon to Santa Venetia, must be saved. No community on earth is more favored than Marin with the wealth and beauty of potential playgrounds. If we don’t acquire some of these lands, the opportunity will surely slip away from us.” A plan to control growth was needed, and four members of the Marin Art and Garden Club took up the challenge, forming the Marin Conservation League to purchase and protect open space.

Caroline Livermore, one of the founders of the Marin Conservation League, and an honorary president, c.1975.

Timber!

On Jan. 23, 1849, thirty men from Maryland formed the Baltimore and Frederick Co. to take advantage of California’s bounty of natural resources. Logging in Marin County became a big focus. One company member, who reportedly opened San Rafael’s first store in 1850, observed: “When we arrived at Larkspur…there was no one to meet us. The country was a wilderness with wild geese in abundance. After the saw mill was installed we erected our dwellings and proceeded to get out lumber. Some of the trees were eight feet in diameter and lifted their immense bulk 300 feet upwards.” The Company disbanded when its men shifted their attention to California’s gold fields.

A view of Larkspur and the railroad station, 1898.

Please Mr. Postman

In Jan. 1937, San Rafael’s D Street post office was dedicated as part of a Depression-era government construction program. (The lot was purchased from Jacob Albert for $10,000.) It was the town’s first “official” post office—previous offices were in Jewell’s Building on B Street and in a meat and grocery store on Third and B Streets. A complaint published in the Marin County Journal in 1863: “Have we a post office in San Rafael? …If the postmaster cannot keep his office open, let him at least put up a box for the reception of letters. This thing of soiling and crumpling letters by shoving them under the door of a place called “Postoffice” (sic) is about played out.”

San Rafael's old post office on
B Street, c.1900s.

In homage to kings

On Epiphany Day, Jan. 6, 1603, Don Sebastian Vizcaino gave the name Punta de los Reyes—Point Reyes—to a peninsula he sailed past during an expedition to locate safe California ports. Paying tribute to the three kings (reyes) who visited the infant Christ, he also named the surrounding bay Puerto de los Reyes. Point Reyes took hold, erasing the name Cabo de Pinos—Cape of Pines—given sixty years before by another Spanish explorer, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. However, Vizcaino’s title for the bay didn’t last. Today’s Drake’s Bay honors Englishman Sir Francis Drake, allegedly the first European to have set foot in Marin County.

Aerial view of the Marin County coast line, 1964. (Brady Collection)