This Week in Marin History
Archives
October 2008

Golden apples

In October 1853, Captain Isaac Morgan of Bolinas exhibited three baskets of apples at the state fair in San Francisco. As far as this entrepreneur was concerned, apples were worth their weight in gold, and he took full advantage of the San Francisco markets. (It was said that he once sold a branch with 20 apples on it for a twenty dollar gold piece.) The colorful young sea captain arrived in Bolinas (known then as Jugville) during the Gold Rush, where he planted apple orchards and built a fleet of schooners to transport his produce. Morgan eventually sold his properties, went east to find a wife, and according to an 1874 telegram “…was killed by a runaway horse.”  He was reportedly thrown from his buggy while courting a young lady.

Apple Orchard in Marin County, 1916.

The struggling artist

On October 24, 2007, Thaddeus Welch’s painting “Willow Tree and Hills, Marin County” was sold at auction for over $16,000. Born in Indiana in 1844, Welch brought Marin’s golden landscape to the attention of the art world, but it took much time and hardship. He and his wife Ludmilla, also a painter, settled in Mill Valley in 1894, where they slept on a borrowed bed and ate a diet of “mussels and mushrooms.” (They also lived sparingly in Steep Ravine and San Geronimo Valley.) Thaddeus Welch had studied in Munich years before under the influence of Corot and Manet, adapting their techniques to the Marin countryside. (Like Corot, he painted best at daybreak and twilight.) Buyers finally came calling, and his canvases are obviously still prized today.

Mill Valley panorama, 1901.

Greatness startles every time

On October 13, 1962, Dr. Theodore Gill, president of the San Francisco Theological Seminary, spoke at the dedication of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Marin County Civic Center Administration Building:

“It is not a profile you will forget. Greatness startles every time it is encountered….If this building is as great as I think it is, we will never get used to it. Do not mistake artful accommodation to its site as modesty of design. The accommodation is a part of the fascination that should seize, a part of the whole picture that is meant to stay in no frame but to reach out and shake the viewer every time. A great building turns every man into a tourist. This building deliberately turns its tax-paying Marin citizen neighbors into tourists in Santa Venetia. Because we will not get used to it. As the travelers who will come far to see it for the first time, we who pass it often will discover it all over again every time.”

Post card of the Marin Civic Center, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, c.1972.

Cattle drive

In October 1877, the Marin Journal reported, “In the valleys and in the rolling hills, thousands upon thousands of cattle found rich pasturage, and grew fat on the wild oats with which they were covered.” Grasslands also covered the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, feeding countless long horned Mexican cattle that roamed there. The industry began with the San Rafael Mission, which depended on income from cattle slaughtered for their hides and tallow, commodities then exported via sailing ships to New England for the manufacture of shoes, soap and candles. The Mission eventually sold its cattle to owners of large land grant ranchos, giving rise to private cattle raising. The cattle trade came to an end during the Gold Rush years as tallow and hides were less in demand, and Marin ranches converted to dairy farming.

Watercolor of Mission San Rafael by Henry Chapman Ford, c.1880.

A tree grows in Ross

On October 1, 1870, commission merchant Albert Dibblee paid $12,738 for 78 acres in Ross on which he would build his Hudson River-style estate called Fernhill. (The Branson School now occupies part of this area.) It was said “…honey suckle twined its fragrance all over the kitchen yard… The path through the formal rose garden was lined with Marie Louise violets, and there were quantities of sweet old-fashioned lilacs…” Dibblee especially loved trees, importing many varieties from his home state of New York, and lined today’s Fernhill Drive with American elms. Indeed, Dibblee’s legacy is evident still today—elms along Shady Lane were planted by him and other Ross homeowners to provide shade and to remind them of their New England heritage.

Albert Dibblee’s home, Fernhill, 1871.