Islands in the Marsh: A High School Instead of Coney Island
by Dewey Livingston
While attending Redwood High School fifty years ago, I thought I knew every inch of Mt. Tamalpais and the surrounding neighborhoods. But I hadn’t a clue that my school — in the shadow of Tam — had been built on an island, only a decade earlier. Walking down Doherty Drive there was a strip of muddy marshland, but everything else around had been paved and built upon. It was always curious to me how Doherty headed straight for the school, and then went around it in a half circle — interesting planning, I thought.
Turns out, that detour around the school grounds traces the outline of the island that once stood there, surrounded by marshland (and water at high tide). The island, called Tennant Hill by one account, was one of three that sat at the edge of San Francisco Bay for centuries, only to be unceremoniously blasted away into historical oblivion.
The area in question is the flatlands east of Larkspur and west of Highway 101 in the Lucky Drive area. Corte Madera Creek formed the northern edge of these marshlands, and three islands punctuated the pickleweed: Richardson’s Island — the largest at 25 acres — on the east; an unnamed seven-acre island called Tennant Hill for about a decade in the center; and a small, one-acre island closer to downtown Larkspur. All three were grassy hills dotted on the edges by oak trees.
The marshes, being underwater much of the time, were not included in the land boundaries of the Mexican land grants, and the islands left unclaimed. The largest island of 25 acres was settled in the 1860s by William Richardson (no relation to the Sausalito land grantee) and his family, and patented by the federal government as a homestead in April 1872. Jonathan Bickerstaff claimed the adjacent wetlands and smaller islands. T. B. Valentine, who also owned uplands in Corte Madera, eventually bought the marshes and smaller islands. His heirs sold the land to the Marin City development Company around 1907, as we shall see.
William Richardson was born in Greece and came to California with the Gold Rush. By the time he had settled on what became known as Richardson’s Island, he had a wife Mary, from Ireland, and five children: Nicholas, Katie, John, Henry, and Mary. The children attended Corte Madera School; the most direct way to school was by boat in the sloughs, but we don’t know if that is the route they took. (Henry grew up to be Capt. Henry Richardson of the Amundson Polar expedition.) The Richardsons had, as of 1870, two horses and a milk cow, and raised winter wheat, oats and barley on the island. William Richardson moved — presumably with his family — to Solano County in the mid-1880s, where he worked as a boat builder.
Richardson’s Island was isolated in the vast marsh until the late 1890s, when hardworking crews constructed the new Tiburon Boulevard from eastern Corte Madera to San Rafael. The new road across the marsh cut into the east edge of Richardson’s Island as it made its way to the drawbridge crossing of Corte Madera Creek near the Greenbrae rail station. In 1908, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad built a cutoff from Larkspur that sliced through the island. The middle and tiny islands were apparently vacant all this time.
In 1907 a syndicate called the Marin City development Company announced its proposal for a “new town” in the marshes east of Larkspur and Corte Madera. Among its promoters was E. L. Merwin, a booster of the proposed Chapman Park in Corte Madera. Like Santa Venetia to the north, the development would be modeled after Venice, with “pleasure canals,” boating and swimming (in a natatorium), and a Coney Island-type park. The marshland would be transformed by dredges that would, according to the Marin Journal, “transform the marsh into a beauty spot” called Marin City.
Near the end of the year a large dredge scooped up mud and created a series of straight ditches reaching from the bay to near the town of Larkspur and northwest towards Escalle and Bon Air, dumping the spoils to create hard land and levees. “It is the intention of the company to push the work,” according to the Journal, “so that Marin City will materialize as rapidly as possible.”
The new development — especially the dredging — alarmed the many occupants of arks on Corte Madera Creek and its side canals. At first, promoter N. G. P. Glenn promised that the arks would stay in place, but by March of 1908 the promise had been broken, as reported in the Marin Journal:
The city of Arkville is to become desolate. Such is the decree of S. D. Valentine who owns all the land in the vicinity of Greenbrae, and the marsh lands, adjoining. The big dredger, which is plowing great furrows under orders of the Marin City Syndicate, wants to operate where the house-boats are, and the arks, launches and other crafts at anchorage, there will have to hunt for greener pastures.
Noting that houseboats can easily be moved, the paper voiced the opinion, “Citizens of Marin County should rejoice that the car of progress is pushing things along, and that the ark city will be replaced by fine houses and all the elements and appurtenances of a live, active municipality.”
The houseboats, for the most part, stayed put. By July — three months after a deadline for the arks to be gone — Marin City’s progress had halted and the arks remained. The big dredge, according to the Journal, “departed for greener fields and the houseboats still hold undisputed sway in the shimmering and translucent waters of Escalle and thereabout.” Thus ended this part of the chapter, but the ditches dug by the dredge remained, and shaped the future of the Larkspur marshes.
But wait — the Marin City syndicate resurfaced just as the claims of its death were published. Its new endeavor followed the news of Northwestern Pacific Railroad’s construction of a rail cutoff between Larkspur and Greenbrae. That new line cut into the south side of Richardson’s Island but most of the island was left intact. The promoters’ new idea was a hotel on the island, served by the rail line. Never happened. It all came under the ownership of the California Land Company, successor to Marin City Development Company. Richardson’s Island, along with much of the marshland to the south, was used by Frank Keever, creator of the Meadowsweet Dairy in Corte Madera, for grazing and hay crops.
Talk of transforming three-lane Highway 101 into a “super highway” inspired new development ideas for the marshes and islands. Mill Valley developer George C. Goheen laid out 216 lots and a commercial area on and near Richardson’s Island in 1942, but the war no doubt led to its demise. But after the war was over, another development proposal for 77 homes on the island by Edward and May Fifer surfaced. The California Department of Highways opposed the idea, noting access challenges.
Richardson’s Island and its surrounding area remained open land well into the 1950s and 1960s, after fights between Larkspur and Corte Madera over annexation in 1950. The old island would not survive progress forever — it was blasted away and its rock filled the surrounding remaining marshland. The MMWD headquarters, an apartment complex and other businesses between 101 and Tamal Vista were constructed on the base of the island. The last remains of the island can be felt as one drives on 101 and feels the rise south of the Lucky Drive exit; or, while passing under the freeway, notice the rock sides of the cut in the island.
The smaller islands faced a similar fate. As solid land — as opposed to marshland — the islands were subject to property taxes and were attractive for development. The larger of the two was purchased by Leland Stanford Tennant Jr. of the Pioneer Electric Construction Company in San Francisco. Tennant, born and raised in Alameda, and his wife Florence built a house around 1946 on the seven-acre island, reached by a long dirt driveway from Lucky Drive that connected to Highway 101 near Richardson’s Island. The landmark hill in the marsh became known as Tennant Hill.
Responding to a rising post-war population, the Tamalpais Union High School District began its expansion in the 1950s, building Sir Francis Drake High School in 1951. A third school was needed in the central part of the county, and in 1952 the district set its sights on the marshes opposite Larkspur, adjacent to the Heather Gardens subdivision. Planners chose an area of 62 acres that included Tennant Hill and the smaller island, and the wetlands surrounding them. The district planned an athletic complex with adequate parking lots to serve all three district schools, which would require a large amount of flat land accomplished by filling the marsh land with rock from the two islands.
Three landowners including Tennant, his brother James Tennant, and Arnold Gridley either refused to sell or asked high prices — citing development potential — and the district’s attorneys prepared to condemn the land. They filed suit in December of 1952 and two years later reached an agreement without condemnation, paying $151,000 for the land and marsh.
Meanwhile, engineers studied tidal history, the stability of the islands, and feasibility of landfill — about 350,000 cubic yards of fill was estimated to be needed — and some residents voiced concerns about building a 3,000-pupil school on unstable filled marshes. District officials assured them that the school itself would be constructed on the solid remains of the Tennant’s island, and not on fill.
The district had hired veteran civil engineer John C. Oglesby in 1952 to make a preliminary survey of the properties, and as plans got serious, they contracted San Rafael surveyor-engineer J. Warren Nute to complete a survey of the properties including structures and characteristics of the marsh. Nute’s detailed survey maps, made with ink on linen, provide a detailed look at the islands and the houses on them before the bulldozers leveled it all. A small house on the tiny one-acre island is depicted; this might have been built by Tennant’s brother, James.
With purchases complete by early 1955, the district allowed Lee and Florence Tennant to remain in their house until construction commenced in March. When the time came, the couple left, the house was torn down, and Tennant Hill was excavated to the point of oblivion. Construction crews dumped the rock and soil up to eight feet deep into the marsh, supplemented by rock from the small island and nearby Niven Hill. The new high school, in the shape of a square with interior courtyard, rose on the footprint of the former island, while a gym complex and other buildings were built on pilings in fill. Larkspur built Doherty Drive across the marsh — following one of the old canals dug by Marin City Development Company in 1907 — to the school, and then continued it around the edge of the island to connect with Lucky Drive on the east side of the property. That’s why Doherty Drive makes that long curve around the school grounds: it is the edge of the old island.
