Homestead Boulevard

Start at Tam junction and follow Almonte Boulevard. Bothin Marsh Open Space is on the right and Almonte on the left. Turn left at the high school to stay on Almonte Boulevard which soon changes its name to Homestead Boulevard. When you pass Morningsun Avenue you’re in Homestead Valley.Continue following Homestead Boulevard past Midway Avenue and you come to the start of Homestead Trail to the open space lands. The trail tries to follow the route of the original Homestead Boulevard, but can’t always find it and ultimately turns off to the right, heading for the Eagle trail.
Only two roads in all of Homestead Valley are shown on a Tamalpais Land & Water Company map entitled “Map No. 3, Showing Subdivisions of Farming and Grazing Lands, Sausalito Ranch, Surveyed by Charles M. Clapp, C.E., 1892.” One unnamed road starts at today’s corner of Montford and Miller and climbs gradually up the ridge on the north side of the valley following today’s Montford, Janes, Molino and Edgewood. It then turns left on the named Sequoia Valley Road which goes to Sequoia Valley, now called Muir Woods. In 1892, San Francisco’s Bohemian Club held their annual summer encampment at what is now called Bohemian Grove in Muir Woods.The other road is named Homestead Boulevard and starts where the high school is today and climbs gradually up the ridge on the south side of the valley ending at Sequoia Valley Road below Four Corners. Homestead Boulevard also appears on a 1905 map of Ranch 5 of the Tamalpais Land & Water Co. It was used by dairy ranchers up in the hills to bring milk down to the railroad in Almonte for shipment to Sausalito and on to San Francisco.

Today, Homestead Boulevard is impassable where it is the boundary between Homestead’s open space and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. In the early 1970’s surveyors buried markers along the boundary. If you’re lucky while beating your way through the brush you might find one and know you’re on the original Homestead Boulevard.

At its Sequoia Valley Road end, Homestead Boulevard has been renamed Amaranth Boulevard which serves a development of 17 homes. In poetry Amaranth is an imaginary flower that never fades or dies. Quite a contrast with Homestead Boulevard much of which is an imaginary thoroughfare that has faded and died.