Nicasio Loses Six Historic Dairy Ranches to Reservoir

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Anne T. Kent California Room Newsletter

14 min readDec 4, 2020

By Dewey Livingston

The Tognalda ranch, established in the 1850s, is burned to make way for Nicasio Reservoir in 1959. Courtesy of Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD)

Excerpted and adapted from Nicasio: The Historic Valley at the Center of Marin, 2012 edition, published by Nicasio Historical Society.

In the years following World War II, the entire country commenced a program of progress. There were education and jobs for returning soldiers, progressive social programs and economic stimuli, improved highways, water systems and general infrastructure, and new housing. The explosive growth of the suburbs during the 1950s affected farming lands surrounding metropolitan areas in many ways, including improved access via modern highways and freeways, upgrades of utilities and telephone services, and sale and subsequent destruction of farm and ranch lands. The spread of the suburbs also brought entire new populations to rural places and displaced families that had been in residence for generations.

For the most part this did not happen in Nicasio Valley; the old roads were not widened, freeway plans were abandoned, and subdivisions were not at all dense. But the rapid suburban growth in eastern Marin brought one project that forever changed the face of the valley — Nicasio Reservoir. Creation of this new water source would obliterate some of the oldest and most historic properties and buildings in Marin County.

Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) grew out of smaller agencies that had been created to bring water supplies to San Rafael and its neighboring towns as they grew during the twentieth century. Water sources on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais provided adequate supplies for the growing county during the first half of the century. As growth increased in the 1950s with the development of Marinwood, Terra Linda, Santa Venetia, Sleepy Hollow, Greenbrae, Madera Gardens, Tiburon and other new communities, the Tamalpais watershed no longer provided enough water and the MMWD searched for new sources. By 1952, “Doc” Varon Smith of Nicasio got word of a plan that would entail a dam in the valley. The Druids called a meeting of “all Nicasio voters and property owners” in June of that year to discuss the MMWD’s water needs and how it could affect Nicasio. By the next year, the agency was at work measuring runoff from the 26,500-acre watershed and installing rain gauges in the area. In 1956, MMWD applied to the State Water Rights Board for water rights to Nicasio Creek, however local residents were informed only through rumor and newspaper articles.

MMWD’s project engineer B. G. Grant determined by 1957 that a reservoir placed in the lower part of the valley could store 8,698 billion gallons of water behind a 170-foot dam, but this would require the condemnation, or purchase, of portions of ten ranch properties totaling over 6,600 acres. The adopted dam size would be smaller and actual acreage taken would be 1,516 acres. However, since most ranch buildings were in the lower areas, six dairy ranches would be put out of business and another five affected by loss of property. Also, lengthy sections of the Nicasio Valley and Point Reyes-Petaluma roads would be inundated, requiring construction of a new bypass at higher elevations to encircle the new lake.

Site of the dam, early in construction. It will block the canyon at right. Courtesy of MMWD.

Construction of the dam would also require a filtration plant because the product of the shallow reservoir would be silty. Water would be piped from the dam to Lagunitas Creek and uphill via the abandoned Northwestern Pacific Railroad grade to a new treatment plant in Woodacre. MMWD called a $12,600,000 bond election in 1956 to pay for Nicasio Dam, water treatment plants at San Geronimo and Bon Tempe (above Ross), modern new offices in Corte Madera, and the required pumps, tanks and transmission facilities. Being out of the water district boundaries, the helpless Nicasio residents did not qualify to vote on the issue.

The November 1956 election brought victory to the water users: 33,385 for and 7,741 against. The MMWD was authorized to create a reservoir large enough to flood the town of Nicasio, but they chose a smaller option. Nonetheless, it would be the largest dam in the MMWD system.

William Robert Seeger, considered the district’s major figure in development during the twentieth century, oversaw the engineering and construction of Nicasio Dam. Seeger, a competent engineer but soon a pariah in Nicasio, first had to contend with the protests of Nicasio landowners. Seeger hoped that the dam would be completed by late 1959.

The dam would put the Farley, McIsaac, Tognalda, Garzoli, Tomasini and Tom Gallagher ranches completely out of business, having flooded their homes and barns, and adversely affect others in the vicinity. These families represented a cumulative 500 years of productive residence in Marin County. The northern Gallagher, Dolcini and Lafranchi ranches would lose good grazing land. Bill Hall would be forced out of the dairy business in 1964, despite being unaffected by land sales to MMWD.

Map of the six dairy ranches flooded by reservoir waters. All of these dated to the 1850s. Map by Dewey Livingston.

Alternate ideas began to arrive as soon as the dam was announced. In December 1956 Marin County Supervisor Ernest Kettenhofen proposed a dam at the head of Tomales Bay instead of the Nicasio dam. Charles East of Healdsburg claimed he could deliver water by gravity along railroad right-of-way from Dry Creek in Sonoma County to Marin and Nicasio residents for $35 per acre-foot. Bob Moir, a water expert on the state Chamber of Commerce, suggested that residents form their own water corporation and get water rights before MMWD, leaving an impartial state water board to decide what’s best for local residents. People talked about a proposed North Bay Aqueduct project, but that would be at least ten years off. At a public meeting, Seeger described the procedure for residents to join the water district which would require a petition for annexation followed by an election.

As time went on, the ranchers became more irate. For at least a year, all they had heard were rumors. Not until October of 1957 did ranchers receive official letters stating that they had two years to be off their land. The local paper called for better public relations by MMWD, pointing out their delay in contacting the county about the bypass road, which would be built by MMWD but maintained by the county. “Ranchers in the lake area are still in the dark about what is happening to them,” wrote George Sherman of the Baywood Press (later the Point Reyes Light). “It’s hard enough for a person to give up his property, even for good cause, without having it rubbed in by lack of a little diplomacy.”

Nicasio ranchers fought the dam plan from the beginning. While the prospect of losing their land and livelihoods was at the forefront, concerns arose about loss of tax income for the school. Florence Filippini Knecht accused MMWD of pouring taxpayers’ money “down another rat hole.” Locals criticized the state Farm Bureau for not supporting the Nicasio residents. Landowners attempted to organize but differing opinions and interests left most owners fending for themselves. MMWD made different offers to owners, unbeknownst to their neighbors. The offers, according to Wilfred Lafranchi, “were very, very small.” A landowner recalled:

We’d meet at each other’s home and [one rancher] was so irate because the first offer of land was $50 an acre, and he said he had just turned down $200 an acre. The main source of difficulty was Mr. Seeger’s attitude. He just came and told you, “That’s it. You have nothing to say.” It was such an intense feeling, and everybody realized it was a way of life that was going to be altered completely.

Seeger “thought we were a bunch of hayseeds,” said Lafranchi. Another official told an unimpressed group of ranchers, “You’re sitting on buckets of diamonds out here.” Most of the landowners hired lawyers, but the best they could do was negotiate better prices for their land. In the end it appeared that compensation depended on how hardnosed the owners and attorneys negotiated.

The multi-generation Tognalda family had to vacate to make way for the reservoir. Courtesy of Joe Tognalda.

To Seeger’s dismay, delays in land acquisition and the need for additional geological tests for the new road slowed his dam project. Soil and foundation investigations could not commence until right of entry was acquired, and the landowners refused to cooperate, flummoxing Seeger and causing him to reconsider the route of the bypass road. The problems delayed the road and dam construction by a full year.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist and San Antonio Road resident Crawford Cooley administered the Beverly Porter (Mabel Burdell) estate for his wife’s sister (James Black’s great-great- granddaughter), collecting rents from four ranchers and taking care of other business concerning the family’s Marin properties. Cooley had an interest in the engineering of the lake and knew it was not an efficient site. The topography of the reservoir would leave forty percent of the water stored in the top ten feet, which would rapidly evaporate from sunlight and wind. He also noted that any municipal water district had high powers of condemnation within their district, but the Nicasio properties weren’t within MMWD’s boundaries. In an attempt to get them to change their mind, he forced them to court to get them to amend their district boundaries which would require a process so complicated that he hoped they might drop the project; the action only delayed it.

MMWD sued rancher Paul Garzoli for condemnation of 149.45 acres. In October of 1959 a jury determined payment higher than the district had wanted to pay, awarding him $34,140 for the property and $6,000 for severance. The parties had already agreed upon $31,000 for improvements; with the value of usable gravel in the creek the price added to $225 per acre. A Solano County judge in Marin Superior Court determined in December that MMWD could proceed with condemnation, despite ranchers’ claims through attorney John Painter that condemnation was illegal because other sources for water were available, namely the Russian River. MMWD attorney Samuel Gardner responded that it would not be economically feasible to import water and that the dam would serve the public interest. Florence Filippini Tomasini Knecht was the next to face condemnation.

Only fifteen people attended a 1958 meeting in Point Reyes Station about the proposed road realignment. Seeger informed the gathering that Nicasio residents would drive slightly farther to Point Reyes Station and have a slightly shorter drive to Petaluma. Seeger claimed the dam would supply the needs of Marin until 2010, as long as West Marin didn’t join the district. The dam would not be used for flood control, and recreation would be limited to shoreline activities such as bird watching, fishing, and hiking. At the time, the estimated cost would be $4 million.

The historic James Black ranch, established in the early 1850s, would be inundated by the new reservoir. Courtesy of MMWD.

Cooley retained Chickering & Gregory of San Francisco and tried at times to get all the ranchers to work together with little success. He was concerned about his tenants, the Tognaldas and Farleys who had been there for 50 years or more and faced relocation without compensation. In the end, with a jury assembled to commence a trial to determine the condemnation award, Cooley forced MMWD to double the amount, finally getting $400 per acre. The Porter estate was left with 1,200 acres including about 400 acres near Nicasio School and the remaining east side of Black Mountain above the new road. It was not economical for them to hold the properties for agricultural purposes so they sold the remainder in the 1970s. One silver lining was that the McIsaacs were able to lease the Porter Estate’s Bowman Ranch on Novato Boulevard, where the family remains dairying today.

The first lands acquired, the Garzoli and Knecht properties, were condemned in late 1959. Already families were leaving. The McIsaacs packed up and moved to Novato in August and the Tognaldas soon followed to a dairy at the Marin-Sonoma border. Work had yet to begin on the dam site and clearing of upstream vegetation and buildings. “It took them about a year to clear the brush,” recalled Mrs. Tomasini of the $6,673 contract let to Alfred Haworth of Stockton. “They cut everything down, all the trees, and dozed them into the creek bed, and they dozed the Gallagher’s and our place and the Tognalda’s across, knocked down the barns and the houses and burned them.” She continued:

What really got me was when they dozed the house. I just couldn’t go watch them do that, and the same when they set fire to everything. You could see the reflection from a distance. I felt badly for the Gallaghers and the Tognaldas because they had been here for years. I was just starting a life out here, and it was disappointing and sad, but the thoughts of all the history that was there, it was just very, very sad.

With professed regret, MMWD employee “Moose” Muzinich bulldozed and burned century-old ranch buildings. This is the McIsaac ranch, occupied since the 1850s. Courtesy of the late Melvin Muzinich.

In early 1960 MMWD accepted bids from Cherf Brothers, Sandkay Construction, Inc. and Cheney Construction of Washington; the total cost for the dam and road was $1,780,569, a million dollars less than expected. Simultaneous to dam construction in narrow Black Canyon below the Bud Farley dairy, the new Point Reyes-Petaluma and Nicasio Valley roads were carved out of the hillsides. The road building proved to be the priciest part of the whole project, taking up over half the cost. Large cuts took down hillsides and wide rock fills spanned creek beds. The new road left the old road north of the school passing through the Lafranchi and Dolcini ranches before meeting the Point Reyes- Petaluma Road at a new intersection. The old “Four Corners” was no more, and the historic sites of a milk skimming station and Pacheco School were either flooded or brought into MMWD property.

As built in 1960, the 115-foot earth fill dam holds 7.3 billion gallons or 22,000 acre-feet of water with an average depth of 25 feet. The median runoff over the spillway is 26,500 acre-feet. The reservoir flooded 869 acres of prime grazing and farming land, caused the removal of almost 50 buildings and displaced five families, their businesses and their employees. The entire project, including land clearing and the road bypass, cost roughly $1,800,000.

The new county road around the new reservoir cost more to build than the dam itself. Courtesy of MMWD.

Some landowners went to the wire as water collected behind the new dam. Hank Tomasini was still negotiating with the MMWD over access roads and construction of his family’s new house in mid-1960 just months before the water would rise. As Mrs. Tomasini recalled,

As the lake was filling up we were still in the old house, and the water was coming. The new house wasn’t ready, and when we moved up here the wood floors were down but they had to do all the finish work around us. We just bought a barbecue table and benches, and in our bedroom I covered orange crates with fabric to make beds. We just sort of camped out.

As the lake filled, the only property issue yet to be settled was the Cutter family lands occupied by the McIsaacs since the early 1880s. Neil McIsaac had moved his family to Novato in 1960 but the buildings remained at the edge of the new lake’s waters through 1961 as the owners negotiated a price. With a $92,000 settlement in 1962, the venerable house and barns, constructed by pioneer James Black 100 years’ prior, were pushed over, broken up and burned. The late Melvin “Moose” Muzinich, the Cat operator and longtime employee of MMWD, hated to see such history disappear, but did his job well. He tied long cables around the barns and yanked them down. He pushed his Cat through the walls of the aging wood frame houses, finally striking a match to the rubble. Muzinich recalled finding “big chandeliers, oak tables, heavy stuff, and old photos” in some of the doomed homes.

Today the Nicasio Reservoir is a popular scenic spot in Marin County, with most of the heritage under its waters forgotten. Fishermen and fisherwomen crowd selected spots along the 16-mile shoreline. When the water level decreases as the summer advances, relics of the past appear. First, the 1930s-era concrete bridge rails from the old highway, then foundations of the skimming station and creameries, then a long section of old roadway laid out in the 1860s. The remains of the historic dairy ranches can be found if you know where to look. The drought of 1976–77 emptied the lake, as photographers scoured the bottom for unusual wildflowers peeking out of the sun-dried, cracked silt.

When Nicasio Reservoir gets low, old highway bridges appear. This photo was taken during the 1976–77 drought. Courtesy of Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History.

Most who know the story of the dam shake their heads in sadness or frustration. The shallow and wide lake is inefficient as water storage as it is murky and fast to evaporate in the swift winds that scour the valley. It is costly to pump the water uphill to the San Geronimo treatment plant, and that is rarely done until water levels at the other storage reservoirs reach certain low points. The reservoir changed Nicasio Valley forever, forcing families out and removing a large portion of the dairying economy. Three of the major dairying properties (the former Garzoli, Farley and Tognalda ranches) affected by the dam were subdivided into low-density tracts and only a few of those support any agriculture. One member of an old Nicasio family noted the changes that began with the dam:

The nature of the valley changed quite a bit after the dam came in. A lot of the dairies were forced to go out and, although it was delayed somewhat, that probably led to the influx of new people who had different goals than being ranchers. That has changed the character of the Nicasio Valley. Sometimes I really wonder — had the dam not gone in, what would’ve happened? Would it have stayed more dairy country, or would it have changed to what it is now? And I don’t know the answer to that question, but I think having the dam built is what began this process.

The dam “spoiled the whole town,” another former resident lamented. “It took a lot of good bottom land” and forced off good families who were part of the cultural fabric of the valley.”

The historic site of James Black’s pioneer ranch, occupied by the Farley family at time of demolition, is partly revealed when waters are low. Photo by Dewey Livingston.

The prospect of dams in Nicasio Valley did not end with the construction of Nicasio Reservoir. The MMWD proposed a 120-foot dam on Halleck Creek in the 1970s that would have inundated 600 acres including the Coast Miwok Rancheria, five ranches, 11 homes, important water wells, and scenic redwood groves and camps. The proposal died under protest. The rock and- earth-fill Soulajule Dam was built in a remote canyon north of the valley. Its waters are rarely pumped over to Nicasio Reservoir as planned. A plan to provide reservoir water to a proposed subdivision on the Cutter Ranch was scotched by local opposition, as was a proposal to allow recreational boating on the lake.

Nicasio Reservoir and all the controversy and pain surrounding its creation did lead to a few positives — a better road in the north Valley, a picturesque lake, and a population that decided to organize to keep it from happening again. Heloise Tomasini said,

One very good thing was that we realized how disorganized we were and began thinking, “What’s going to happen to the valley now?” So we started the Landowners Association.

The last 50 years in Nicasio Valley have been marked by a well-organized, progressive yet conservation-oriented and legally sound planning effort by dedicated residents that has succeeded in keeping the rural character of Nicasio Valley intact. And, Nicasio Reservoir, despite its troubled and sad history, is a popular fishing spot and scenic attraction in West Marin.