Reading the Maps, Number 4: The San Rafael (Fairfax)-Bolinas Road in 1877
by Dewey Livingston
In this series we look at historic survey maps in the collection housed at the Anne T. Kent California Room Maps & Special Collections Annex. The maps featured are posted online for the reader to see in full detail; note the specific URL in the article. Click on the arrows in the upper right corner of the map to expand the image, then further enlarge or shrink using the + and — buttons.
Marin, one of California’s first counties when it became a state in 1850, was virtually a wilderness at that time. Within a decade there were still few roads or established towns, and all commerce to San Francisco was done by water. By 1870, only one road led to the busy Marin coast, though a better one would be built that year-the present-day Highway One from Tamalpais Valley to Stinson Beach. Still, a new route to Bolinas, an active port and source of dairy products and lumber, was badly needed.
The North Pacific Coast Railroad, which began operations in early 1875, did not reach the ocean, instead following Tomales Bay and heading inland near Tomales. In 1877, residents petitioned the Board of Supervisors for a new road from the county seat at San Rafael to Bolinas. For details on the construction and history of this road, consult Brian K. Crawford’s excellent and meticulously researched book, The Bolinas-Fairfax Road (The Crawford Press, 2017).
The Anne T. Kent California Room’s collection of unrecorded survey maps includes dozens of early road surveys. One of the most interesting is entitled, “PLAT of the San Rafael and Bolinas Road / … Fairfax & Bolinas Bay Road, Petitioned for by A. D. Easkoot and Others….” Made in August 1877 and altered over the following year, the map can be seen, and the following narrative followed, by clicking this link. The map was made by County Surveyor Hiram Austin in preparation for the construction of a major Marin County roadway linking San Rafael to the coast.
What is very interesting about the map-in addition to its many fascinating details-is that it shows two potential routes, both adopted but at different times. The first road to be constructed, in 1878, was indeed from San Rafael, and the alternate route depicted on the map commenced at Fairfax. The original route required crossing three ridges, and the change to Fairfax (constructed in 1884) eliminated one of those: the ridge route from San Rafael to Ross over Makin Grade. (This section is not depicted on the map.) Today, the old route from San Rafael to its junction at the Fairfax road has been enveloped into a series of trails-Shaver Grade above Phoenix Lake is one-and local roads, like Lagunitas Road in Ross.
To look in detail at the map, let’s start on the far right-hand side, the eastern terminus of the proposed road, considering that Makin Grade had not yet been constructed. The route heads west through Ann Ross’s property and up Phoenix Gulch, over Bon Tempe Ridge to Lagunitas Creek, down the creek to Alpine, then up and over the high and challenging Bolinas Ridge to the north end of Bolinas Lagoon, in the lower left corner. The alternate route, at the top of the map, starts at Fairfax and ascends a steep ridge over to the other route at Lagunitas Creek. To lay out this road, Austin and his survey crew had to climb steep hills, cross creeks, climb fences, and cut thick brush, all while meticulously measuring distances, elevations, and grades in small notebooks. In a local way, it was a great feat of engineering.
The proposed road is depicted as three parallel lines, inked in with yellow. The middle line is the centerline of the road. The small circles within are the survey points at each bend in the line, creating tangents (straight lines) and curves. When constructing the road, the laborers would follow these points, flagged with a stake, and create smooth curves where the survey showed a group of points connected by short, straight lines.
The eastern terminus of the San Rafael-Bolinas Road as depicted here, is at what was called the Ross Landing Road or some variation, today’s Sir Francis Drake Blvd. at Lagunitas Road in Ross. Looking at the map, we will be traveling from right to left, east to west. Austin followed the road he had already laid out a few years prior for Mrs. Ross through her property-see the article about that survey that included the new Lagunitas Road by clicking here. Sunnyside Station, seen on the map, was renamed Ross in 1882.
At the gate marking the western boundary of Mrs. Ross’s property, the road winds into Phoenix Gulch and crosses creeks that would require bridges as marked. Part of this section is the road into Natalie Coffin Green Park and Phoenix Lake. Notice the old route that hugged the creek and crossed the bottom of Bill Williams Gulch; Austin’s design would gain altitude by going up the side hill and abandoning this small road. The eastern part of that old road is the trail to the foot of the dam today. Notice the names of landowners that the road passed through-Ross, Dibblee, Worn, Coleman-all prominent residents of the county.
The next section is today covered by Phoenix Lake, built in 1905 to supplement the water supply from Lake Lagunitas. We are now in the lands of the Marin County Water Company, which had already built Lake Lagunitas five years earlier to supply water to San Rafael. The road passed the Porteous ranch, and at the “2 Miles” marker reached the bottom of Fish Gulch. The survey depicts the bottom of Fish Grade, a hiking trail today.
Beyond Fish Gulch, look for the notation “Foot of Grade.” Here, a spot known as Hidden Meadow and the site of the small Hyppolite (sic: Hippolyte) dairy ranch; the older Bolinas Route is shown as Shaver Grade. This is the route used by lumberman Isaac Shaver to reach the redwood timber in the Alpine vicinity, which he hauled by ox team to Ross Landing; it connected with the Mexican-era Bolinas Trail. The older Shaver Grade, while not an official trail, remains today as it climbs steeply up the gulch. Austin’s new route required many curves, culverts and a bridge as it ascended the ridge. This road remains a popular dirt road in the MMWD watershed, called Shaver Grade.
After rejoining the old Shaver Grade, the surveyors reached the summit of the ridge, marked at Stake 378. The road now descended into Lagunitas Canyon, and today you can drive this section as the access to Bon Tempe Dam. Now we are in the Lagunitas Dairy tract of the Marin County Water Company. The new road passes the Lagunitas Dairy, later known as the Bautumpi/Bontempi (many spellings have been recorded) or Bon Tempe Ranch, sited in the area below the dam of that name today. Passing through a gate, the road reaches the alternate route from Fairfax. Let’s divert a bit and have a look at that.
At the time the survey was made, Fairfax wasn’t much of a town. The county road to Olema, which was used to get to Bolinas at the time and is today’s Sir Francis Drake Blvd., was completed in 1865–67, and the North Pacific Coast Railroad had begun service two and a half years before this survey. The only building marked is a saloon. The proposed road heads south and east through the Sais Tract and begins its ascent on the lands of Saunders & McCrea. This is the current route of the Fairfax-Bolinas Road out of Fairfax, although the line up the ridge appears to have been altered. Marked in blue pencil is a line-apparently added at a later time on the map-noted as “Vicinity of Road Petitioned For,” which was not built. That blue line extends all the way to near the top of Shaver Grade. The southernmost part of the blue line route is today’s access road to Lake Lagunitas.
The survey reached the “Top of Grade” and then followed a side hill to a “Foot of Grade.” The sharp turn to the south is where today the Sky Oaks access road to the lakes leaves the current Fairfax-Bolinas Road. The county built a new road from this point in 1909 to bypass the ill-fated Tamalpais Dam project. Near the next “Top of Grade” is the “2 Miles” marker, where the water district office at Sky Oaks stands today. The road heads southwest through fairly level meadows and past a lagoon, now at the southern end of the Meadow Club golf course, then south through Bullfrog Gulch to meet the San Rafael/Ross route.
Now heading west down and along the north side of Lagunitas Creek, the road passes across the “Ranch Line” between Ranchos Punta de Quentin (water company land) and the Rancho Tomales y Baulines Phelps Patent, owned by the Point Reyes dairy barons Shafters & Howard (and later in part by Stanford University). At five miles the road passes “Liberty’s Dairy.” Until recently this had been the pioneer dairy of Loomis Curtis who arrived almost a decade earlier, hence the name Curtis Gulch inscribed above the ranch (the canyon has long been called Liberty Gulch, effectively erasing Curtis’s name from the landscape). Vincent Liberty, late of Lagunitas, took over the dairy in 1876 and later, with his wife Mary, established a roadhouse here that catered to travelers along the road.
The road continues to follow the creek for a mile and a half past Liberty’s, all the time supplanting the old San Rafael and Bolinas Trail in roughly the same location. All of this section is now covered by Alpine Lake. At the creek crossing at Bridge №7, the old Mexican-era trail took off to the southwest, straight up the ridge on a steep grade, as the new road had to start up an easier grade, providing an engineering challenge to get over the high Bolinas Ridge. Here you can see that Austin pondered an alternate grade up into Cascade Gulch-today a popular place for winter waterfalls-but stuck with the lower one. Had the upper route been chosen, some of the present-day public’s favorite cascade would have a road cutting through them, right between the “Upper Cascade” and “Crystal Lake” and the “Lower Cascade” as depicted on the map.
In this area, notice the place names in Cascade Gulch-Redwood Cañon, Webbs Cañon, and Boulder Gulch. The short piece of trail from today’s paved road into Cascade Gulch is a rare remnant of Austin’s original road as built.
A bridge (№8) crossed the creek and here the road began its serpentine route up the side of the ridge, in and out of gulches, and then into the three hairpin turns, numbered as Turns №1, 2 and 3. This might have been Austin’s greatest challenge, engineering these turns in order to gain elevation in a short distance. Today’s paved road, although wider, is practically identical to the 1878 grade.
At the summit, the map shows a “Road on Ridge” (obscured). Later the Summit House occupied the inner part of the curve at the top, where hosts like Christian Larsen and Constantine DeSella welcomed visitors, whether for a quick stop for food and drink or overnight stays.
Now the road descends towards Bolinas. We soon cross “Weeks Road,” an old route from the ranch of Samuel Weeks at the edge of Bolinas Lagoon-today part of Audubon Canyon Ranch. In fact, much of the land below the road today is part of that non-profit environmental organization. Today, Weeks Road is called Bourne Fire Road, named after Weeks’s neighbor on the lagoon. Another pioneer lagoon-side rancher, Benjamin Morse, had his road marked, seen south of the summit.
The new road continues to plunge downward, around sharp curves and though thickets of manzanita and redwood groves, with spectacular views of Bolinas and the Pacific Ocean. Mabel Dodge Bullis, daughter of Austin’s successor George M. Dodge, described the experience after passing over the summit in the stagecoach: “That was a thrilling moment, when the whole world seemed suddenly spread out before us, and the four horses began to trot down the hill, swinging us around the sharp curves at fully twelve miles an hour!” This section required four bridges-over Greenwood, Little Greenwood, and Pike County gulches-and two dozen redwood box culverts as it made its way down the steep hillside.
This section was subjected to a few different options of travel. Austin laid out at least three proposals, and the one depicted here was not used. In Austin’s plan on this survey, the road descended into Pike County Gulch (read the article by Robert L. Harrison published here, using this link) to meet the Saucelito and Bolinas Road at the foot of the gulch. This was because landowner William Wallace Wilkins, whose fine dairy ranch sat at the head of the lagoon, refused to allow the road across his land without adequate compensation and protection. However, the route was changed after things settled down with Wilkins, and at Mile 13 the road would head west to meet at the junction of the Saucelito and Olema roads. Someone later sketched in an inaccurate pencil line approximating this route, which remains in use today.
The Saucelito and Bolinas Road was not passable at this time except at low tide. Not until the twentieth century did the lagoon get an “all-weather” road, today’s Highway One.
And so the survey ends. Fourteen miles across some of the wildest places in Marin County was a huge feat in those days. Today’s hikers, bicyclists and drivers can use much of the remnant old road: from Fairfax to Sky Oaks; from Ross to Phoenix Lake; all of Shaver Grade; and the Fairfax Bolinas Road from Alpine Dam to Highway One. Now imagine the trip 140 years ago!
Marin historian Dewey Livingston is the map archivist at the California Room’s Map & Special Collections Annex.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
