VIGNETTE > Tamalpais Valley

Tamalpais Junction – 1955 (private collection) – click to enlarge

The Tamalpais Valley Community Services District has about 7000 residents. In 1906, S.A. Moss bought Ranch E from the Tamalpais Land & Water Co. The area was called Coyote Hollow, the drainage shed of Coyote Creek. A 1909 subdivision brochure advertising lots for sale named the area Tamalpais Valley. The brochure noted that the lots were located on the road to Bolinas, the easiest approach to Redwood Canyon (Muir Woods) and were served by regular trains (at Manzanita and Almonte stations). By 1919, with the post World War I subdivision boom, Tamalpais Valley began to emerge as a distinct community. The initial development was called Little City Farms. In 1927 Tamalpais Woods was subdivided. A business district developed along Shoreline Highway, the only route north until the Richardson Bay Bridge was built in 1931. By the 1920s, the junction of Shoreline Highway and the road to Mill Valley was known as Dolan’s Corners after the landowner there. The tidelands came nearly up to the junction. Tamalpais Valley’s working class and rural roots were eventually subsumed by the great suburban expansion after World War II. Kay Park was developed in 1948/1949 and Crest Marin in 1952/1953. Dolan’s Corners was renamed Tamalpais Junction. In the 1970s, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area stretched across the ridges surrounding Tamalpais Valley, thus preventing further subdivisions.