This Week in Marin History
Archives
September 2011
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This Week in Marin History
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"Mountaineers"In Sept. 1903, William Kent met with local conservationists at the Lagunitas Country Club in Ross to create the Mount Tamalpais National Park Association. The goal was to help prevent unbridled development of what was then a "privately owned" mountain—"to provide residents of San Francisco and its environs with a reserve on the lines of Yellowstone Park." Attendees included David Starr Jordan, first president of Stanford (which owned more than 2,000 acres in Marin County) and preeminent botanist Alice Eastwood. The meeting set the stage for later conservational actions, including Kent’s donation of Muir Woods to the federal government. |
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"St. Andrews of America"On Sept. 12, 1908, the nine-hole Marin Golf and Country Club opened east of San Rafael off North San Pedro Road. When hope faded that the course would accommodate nine additional holes (too hilly and developed), members negotiated with the Marin Municipal Water District to build a club above Fairfax. The Meadow Club of Tamalpais opened in 1927, the first U.S. course designed by famed British golf course architect Dr. Alister MacKenzie, who aspired to build "the St. Andrews of America." The site of the Marin Golf and Country Club, foreclosed in 1939, was later used as a WWII barracks and then developed into homes (Fairway Drive). |
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"Civil War Relics"On Sept. 12, 1863, the first soldiers arrived at Angel Island’s newly established military base Camp Reynolds (West Garrison). The federal government’s decision to fortify the island was partly based on a fear that Confederate sympathizers might attack naval installations at Mare Island and the Benicia Arsenal. (California had many southern-born residents sympathetic to the Confederate cause.) Camp Reynolds (named for a general killed in the Battle of Gettysburg) later processed troops fighting Apache, Sioux and other tribes in the west. Today its officer’s quarters are the oldest surviving buildings on the island, and some of the best-preserved Civil War military buildings in the U.S. |
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"Cow Heaven"Sept. 1941 California Historical Society Quarterly: "Clara Steele…had persuaded an Indian to rope and milk some of the wild Spanish cattle, and from the milk so obtained, using a recipe she found in a book, had made some cheese. This cheese she sent along with other farm produce, to a commission house in San Francisco. There was an instant demand for more cheese, and, using Clara Steele’s recipe, the great industry was launched." Clara was a member of the Steele family that in the 1850s pioneered California’s commercial dairy industry in Point Reyes, "cow heaven." The Steeles later expanded their operations to Pescadero and beyond. |
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