November 19, 2015: Legacy of the Cushing & Eldridge Families in Marin
by Laurie Thompson
Please join us on Thursday, November 19, 2015 for a special audio-visual presentation by Tim Wood, a great-great grandson of John Jenckes Cushing & John Oscar Eldridge, as Wood elaborates on the legacies of the Cushing & Eldridge Families in Marin. The presentation will begin at noon in the Marin County Civic Center Library.
Dr. John Jenckes Cushing established Blithedale, initially a health retreat, in what is now Mill Valley. His son Sidney Barlow Cushing became founding president of the Mill Valley & Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railway. The Sidney B. Cushing Memorial amphitheater on Mt. Tamalpais was named in his honor.
Sidney B. Cushing was also a close friend and associate of the Kent family. He managed Albert E. Kent’s Chicago office from the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s. In the early 1900s he helped William Kent broker the purchase of Redwood Canyon from the Tamalpais Land & Water Company which led to the creation of Muir Woods.
John Oscar Eldridge, who became prominent in Marin real estate in the 1880s, built a scenic carriage road, the Eldridge Grade, to the Summit of Mt. Tamalpais. According to Barry Spitz, author of Tamalpais Trails:
Eldridge Grade opened December 13, 1884, the first road to the summit of Mt. Tamalpais. Construction took five months and cost $8,000…..The Grade was built for horse-drawn wagons, with wide turnouts…. Six-horse, ten-passenger Tally-Ho wagons made regular excursions over it from the Hotel Rafael in San Rafael. The road project was headed by John Oscar Eldridge who came to California from New York in 1849.
Spitz tells us that Eldridge also brought street lightening to San Rafael and was a founder of the San Rafael Gas Company. Eldridge’s daughter married Sidney B. Cushing.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
