This Week in Marin History
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January 2010

Mountain woman

Geographer George Davidson’s wife Elinor’s diary entry in 1859: “In January went into camp life with my husband on the top of Tamal Pais, carried across the bay in small sailboat & up the cattle trail on pony to the top of mountain where no woman had ever been… Snow on the ground & we lived in tents. At night could hear bears prowling around. Slept with pistol by my side as I was completely alone, my husband & brother being at work through the night at observatory 3 miles distant… Returned to San Francisco & in November 59 my first child was born.” Davidson’s son was probably the first child conceived on Mt. Tamalpais—unfortunately he lived for just a few months.

Snow covered Mount Tamalpais, n.d.

Cold War museum

On Jan. 20, 1959, the first public showing of a Nike Hercules missile at Fort Barry in the Marin Headlands took place. Active from 1954 to 1974, Fort Barry (also known as Site SF-88L) was part of a Cold War air defense system of more than 300 Nike sites nationwide. Although the five-ton Hercules had a range of some 100 miles and could be armed with conventional explosives or nuclear warheads, it was never deployed from the site—indeed, no missiles were ever launched from any Nike site. Largely due to the efforts of volunteers, Fort Barry is the only restored missile site in the U.S today, hosting some 20,000 visitors a year.

Entrance to Fort Barry, c.1920s.

Shifting hands

On Jan. 12, 1921, a 52-acre parcel of land behind Drake’s Beach was sold as a hunting preserve to Dr. Ernest Chipman for $1000. But the lagoon there proved to be a death trap for stray livestock, and Chipman’s ranching neighbors weren’t happy. In 1938 he sold the preserve to a group of private citizens for $3000, some of which was raised by the Pirates Club of San Rafael. Later that year the property was turned over to Marin County “in perpetuity for continuous and perpetual use…as a public beach, pleasure ground, park and place of recreation.” The National Seashore took over the land in 1965, as well as the trail to McClures Beach.

Point Reyes National Seashore, Drake's Bay, 1962. Marin History Museum, Brady Collection.

A tree grows in Marin

In Jan. of 1879, tens of thousands of eucalyptus seedlings were planted on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery. The proliferation of Australia’s native tree in Marin County can be largely attributed to nurseryman Robert J. Trumbull, who promoted the Tasmanian blue gums as effective windbreakers and property dividers. Trumbull worked at a San Francisco seed company before opening his own expansive nursery covering an entire block in San Rafael in the 1870s. (200,000 varieties of plants were said to have been available there.) Today the West End Nursery, established in 1909, stands on Trumbull’s former site.

Illustration of Trumbull’s Nursery from San Rafael Illustrated, 1884. Marin History Museum, Roy Farrington Jones Collection.