Vignettes

Originally, the only motor vehicle route to the Muir Woods reservation began in downtown Mill Valley. In 1915, an article in the Marin County Tocsin claimed that congestion at Throckmorton Avenue in Mill Valley “has virtually ‘bottled’ the reservation so far as motorists are concerned.”  To improve access, two new routes were established. One involved…

In 1905, Carmelita Garcia Boyle and her son Hugh A. Boyle II had a 30-acre parcel surveyed for a housing tract. Carmelita hoped to donate two “choicest acres” to Mill Valley for a park. She died a few months later. In 1908, Mill Valley voters passed a bond issue to acquire six  acres for what…

The death of an old horse named Buttercup (aka Kayla) marked the end of an era in which horses grazed in the Pixie Trail area of Homestead Valley.  She succumbed during a 36-hour storm that blew in Sunday night, December 10, 1995. It produced 14 inches of rain with winds up to 90 miles per…

Alec Eells was a successful San Francisco lawyer.  After the 1906 earthquake, he and his family moved to his 8-acre gentleman’s farm in Homestead Valley.  In the summer of 1909 he had enjoyed a 3-week Sierra Club camping trip in Yosemite. In 1910 the whole family would vacation there. That meant seven people: Alec, his…

The challenge: how to provide older residents with the practical means and the confidence to live their lives to the fullest in their own home as they grow older.  A group of friends in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston came up with an answer. Beacon Hill Village enrolled its first members in February 2002…

Coast Miwoks were present in the area for at least 5000 years Land in Mill Valley 94941 1776 – 1821: Spain owns the land 1817: Mission San Rafael is founded 1821 – 1846: Mexico owns the land 1834: Secularization of the church which cedes its land to the government 1834: John Reed (b.1805, Dublin) acquires…