Monday, January 27, 2020: San Geronimo Valley: Presentation & Book Signing by Owen Clapp
by Carol Acquaviva
The following excerpt is from the recently-published Images of America: San Geronimo Valley by its author and historian Owen Clapp:
Before 1914, what today is known as Forest Knolls was thought of as the eastern reaches of Lagunitas. It was sparsely populated but had enough residents to support a general store in the current Papermill Creek Saloon building, constructed in 1907.
Much like the Village name Woodacre, the name Forest Knolls was the invention of the Lagunitas Development Company, surely inspired by the grassy knolls atop its low hills. While it was the last of the four villages to be conceived, it soon caught up to its neighbors with a commerical district that in the 1940s boasted two grocery stores, two gas stations, two bars, a dance hall, a beauty salon, and a branch of the Marin County Free Library.
The first train depot came in 1915. A post office opened two years after the town was named, in 1916. The commercial corners at Castro Street and Montezuma Avenue sprung up shortly after the naming of the town, but it was not until the 1940s that businesses just east of the old downtown were established on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. The now world-famous Lagunitas Brewing Company began brewing in Forest Knolls in 1993 but took its name, of course, from the neighboring village where founder Tony Magee had worked from his kitchen.
Please join the Anne T. Kent California Room on Monday, January 27, 2020 at 6:30 pm at our Map & Special Collections Annex at 1600 Los Gamos, Lobby B, Suite 182, as Woodacre native Owen Clapp shares rare, historic photographs of Woodacre, Lagunitas, Forest Knolls, San Geronimo, and more from his book Images of America: San Geronimo Valley, the first dedicated history of the San Geronimo Valley. Through these compelling images, Clapp will narrate the history of the valley from the 1800s to the present. Copies of the book will be available at a discounted price, and available for signing.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
