Today, on a lovely, forested hillside overlooking Tomales Bay, just south of the town of
Marshall, sits the 106 year-old Marconi Conference Center. It was gifted to the State of
California in 1989 after a purchase made possible by the San Francisco Foundation and
Buck Trust Fund financing. Originally built to receive wireless telegraph signals from
across the Atlantic Ocean, the Center’s website boasts that, “Marconi continues in the
tradition of communication by providing meeting and retreat services for the Bay Area.”
Guglielmo Marconi was a Nobel Prize winning inventor and engineer whose pioneering work in radio wave transmission ushered in the era of long-distance communications and the ‘radio age.’ After ground breaking work in Italy and England, Marconi began working on building transmission stations on both U.S. Coastlines that would link North America with Asia and Europe. According to a 1913, S.F. Call article, over 1,100 acres of Tomales Bay land was purchased from the Maggetti family for $75, 600. The receiving station was built over the next year and the transmitting station placed a few miles away in Bolinas. These geographically separate “duplex stations” were necessary as the noise from transmitting the signal obscured clear reception at the receiving end. The new technology also enabled ship to shore communications and Marconi has been credited with saving thousands of lives from shipwrecks, including the 712 survivors of the Titanic. The receiving station required a one-mile-long antennae that was supported by seven 270 ft. towers. In the photograph above, the two-story Craftsman style staff and visitors’ hotel featured thirtyfive rooms, a library, game room, lounge, and dining hall. To the right is the powerhouse that contained the boiler, transformers, storage batteries and a workshop.
Up through World War I The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America was the dominant radio communications company in the United States. However, after the war pressure from the U.S. government forced the mostly foreign-owned Marconi company to sell its assets to RCA, a subsidiary of General Electric. GE operated the station until 1947. In the early 1960s, the infamous drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization, Synanon (some would say ‘cult’) purchased the property and moved their headquarters to the Tomales site. After many brushes with the law, accusations of violence, and even a murder conviction, all exposed by the Pulitzer Prize-Winning work of the Pt. Reyes Light newspaper, the site was put up for sale and passed into the hands of the State of California.
(Originally appeared as History Watch article in the Marin Independent Journal)
Guglielmo Marconi was a Nobel Prize winning inventor and engineer whose pioneering work in radio wave transmission ushered in the era of long-distance communications and the ‘radio age.’ After ground breaking work in Italy and England, Marconi began working on building transmission stations on both U.S. Coastlines that would link North America with Asia and Europe. According to a 1913, S.F. Call article, over 1,100 acres of Tomales Bay land was purchased from the Maggetti family for $75, 600. The receiving station was built over the next year and the transmitting station placed a few miles away in Bolinas. These geographically separate “duplex stations” were necessary as the noise from transmitting the signal obscured clear reception at the receiving end. The new technology also enabled ship to shore communications and Marconi has been credited with saving thousands of lives from shipwrecks, including the 712 survivors of the Titanic. The receiving station required a one-mile-long antennae that was supported by seven 270 ft. towers. In the photograph above, the two-story Craftsman style staff and visitors’ hotel featured thirtyfive rooms, a library, game room, lounge, and dining hall. To the right is the powerhouse that contained the boiler, transformers, storage batteries and a workshop.
Up through World War I The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America was the dominant radio communications company in the United States. However, after the war pressure from the U.S. government forced the mostly foreign-owned Marconi company to sell its assets to RCA, a subsidiary of General Electric. GE operated the station until 1947. In the early 1960s, the infamous drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization, Synanon (some would say ‘cult’) purchased the property and moved their headquarters to the Tomales site. After many brushes with the law, accusations of violence, and even a murder conviction, all exposed by the Pulitzer Prize-Winning work of the Pt. Reyes Light newspaper, the site was put up for sale and passed into the hands of the State of California.
(Originally appeared as History Watch article in the Marin Independent Journal)
For more background information see our online catalog!