Reading the Maps, Number 5: Southeastern San Rafael in 1889
by Dewey Livingston
Progress, in a civic sense, is measured by the development of a town, county, or state. Progress is development of commercial buildings, housing tracts, roads and railroads; it signifies the transition from rural farm or wild land to suburban or urban places. San Rafael has certainly seen much “progress” since the early days when it was a dusty, former Spanish mission town in the halting process of turning into a small city and county seat. Starting in the 1850s, new arrivals in the new county built around the collapsing mission compound, but soon spread out in all directions.
While San Rafael got its start in the shadow of San Rafael Hill where the mission and courthouse had stood, the owners of the surrounding land-Forbes, Coleman, Short among others-went to work dividing up their ranches into neighborhoods. East of the town core lay vast marshes with little potential for development, but the land south of it, being the north side of the San Quentin Peninsula, held promise. The area was soon crossed by four transportation routes, including two roads and two railroads, but their focus was on the ferry landing at distant San Quentin, or in one case, the rails to the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad’s terminus at Tiburon: just passing through.
Though development of southeastern San Rafael was slow, undaunted by the marshes, developers later used huge amounts of fill to create new land (as we shall see, a prominent Marin island or two was lost to the cause). This is the area we which today includes Francisco Boulevards, the Andersen Drive and Bellam Blvd. commercial areas, the Canal area, and the old dump where Target and other businesses sit. The map featured in this fifth installment of “Reading the Maps” shines a light on the early landforms, layout, and development of the area, and will show how many of the patterns set down on the land over 130 years ago remain today.
The Anne T. Kent California Room’s collection of unrecorded survey maps includes dozens of early surveys that show shorelines, roads and railroads. One of particular interest shows the southeastern part of San Rafael from Picnic Valley to Point San Quentin, when transit routes crossed the area but development was minimal. The map, entitled “Map of the Coleman Tract near San Rafael…Southern Portion” was the result of a survey by civil engineer George M. Dodge. Made in February 1889, the full map can be seen, and the narrative followed, by clicking this link.
This survey map, drawn in ink, pencil, and watercolor on tan paper, covers the area from the foot of Lindaro Street and Picnic Valley (in the upper left corner) to the ferry wharf in the lower right corner. The entire upper right third of the map depicts the shallow marshes, overlaid with a grid according to the 1871 State Tidelands Survey in preparation for future filling. The only landmark of note is the small “rock” in Section 2: that is South Marin Island-the third of the Marin Islands, but farther removed from its still-extant sisters to the north-earlier called Murphy Rock (likely named for Mexican-era resident Timoteo Murphy) and now blasted away and enveloped in bay fill.
First, some background: William T. Coleman, a wealthy commission merchant known for his leadership of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee and owner of the famed borax mines in Death Valley, bought up much of San Rafael in 1871, including the 549 acres mapped on this survey. Only a year before this survey was made, in 1888, Coleman’s name had been floated as a candidate for President of the United States. Coleman may have been trying to sell off this land, as he was experiencing a financial free fall at the time. Neighboring landowners seen on the map include J. O. B. Short to the west, who created Short’s Addition that includes the D Street neighborhoods and Gerstle Park; Mrs. James Ross who owned 57 acres at Point San Quentin, among her family’s last holdings of their Rancho Punta de Quentin; and the state prison, which still occupies much of the point.
There are four main themes that are interesting to follow on the map: the original shoreline of San Francisco Bay; the old roads to San Quentin; the two railroad lines; and the proposed suburban developments. The early shoreline is shown as an ink line, hard to follow, but noted by block numbers denoting marshland. Look in the upper left part of the map, to the right (east) of Picnic Valley, and you will see a partial grid numbered 24, 23, 22, etc. Anywhere numbers like these appear on the map, it is subdivided marshland. So, the loop below “County Road” and containing the numbers 27 and 28, is a cove on the shoreline, with two points of land on either side. Although the marsh has been filled and developed, these points of land still exist, occupied by the residents of Bret Harte Road on the west and Blossom Drive on the east. Another cove is farther southeast, tide lot number 30, now ringed by Auburn Street in the Lomita Park neighborhood. In fact, the toe of the slopes of solid land, where it meets marshland, is defined on the map by the route of the County Road to San Quentin, which by necessity had to hug the edge of land to avoid the muddy marsh.
For a different map of the same area, made about twenty years earlier, and which shows the shoreline more clearly, click here.
In addition to South Marin Island, two other notable islands are noted on the map. Simms Island was the home of San Rafael pioneer John Simms, who operated a farm and orchard there. Simms was elected as the first superintendent of county schools in 1857. Coleman’s land purchase in 1871 included the 20-acre island and he offered it for grazing, along with 600 acres of marshland. At one point, local men proposed moving the downtown public cemetery to Simms Island. That didn’t happen, and it later became the site of Scheutzen Park, a resort that was popular with Bay Area residents and later called California Park. (Hence, the name California Park Tunnel to the south.) In the 1950s Simms Island was blasted away to create level land for development, including the post office and the beloved drive-in Motor Movies, long a nostalgic landmark and site of many first kisses; today it is the Marin Square shopping center. The only clue of the island’s past is short, dead end Simms Street, an old roadway that curves along the southeastern edge of the former island. (For a more detailed survey of Simms Island and Scheutzen Park click here.)
At the very tip of Point San Quentin is little Agnes Island. The developer of the first ferry line in the 1850s built a causeway to the rocky lump and a wharf for the ferries to dock. The railroad-as told later in the article-also used the island as its terminus. Agnes Island saw its doom with the construction of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in the mid-1950s.
The map depicts the various sloughs and waterways of San Rafael Bay. These would be covered by water at high tide and exposed otherwise. Already the engineers had been altering them, in one case to avoid a road fill near the top of the map. The “San Rafael Canal” in the upper right was only a proposal at this time, an enlarged waterway planned on the 1871 Tidelands Survey to allow ships’ access to San Rafael.
The first road to San Quentin, site of the pioneer ferry terminal serving San Rafael, is shown here as “County Road.” Constructed in the 1850s, this offered a serpentine route to the point that took an hour to navigate in good weather. As noted above, it followed the shoreline from downtown until heading up the low ridge in the vicinity of today’s Sir Francis Drake exit off 580. Notice a small plot of land marked “O’Connor”; this was a small one-time dairy ranch owned by Thomas O’Connor, who at one time was the teacher at San Quentin State Prison and later was a prominent local architect/builder. O’Connor met his wife, Cassie Leonard, while she was working at Sheppard’s Hotel on the point. The family bought this land around 1871, and still owned it as of 1940. Subsequent highway development obliterated the little place.
Unhappy with the torturous old road to San Quentin, local citizens banded together to build a toll road across the marshes that would provide a direct line to the ferry landing. In 1865 the San Rafael & San Quentin Toll Road opened, significantly cutting the travel time to the point. This new road, often called the turnpike road, is shown on the map heading southeast to Simms Island, curving around the island’s north shore and on another tangent out to the point, where it curved around and met the causeway to little Agnes Island.
The old San Quentin Road remained in use for those who did not want to pay the toll. Today, much of it has been widened into Woodland Road, with Auburn Street arcing around the former marshy cove. Jacoby Street follows the old route farther south. The toll road was eventually supplanted by Highways 101 and 580.
Then there are the railroads. This corner of the county had two. The first, the San Rafael & San Quentin Railroad, was built in 1869 as an even quicker way to the point than the toll road. This shows how important Point San Quentin and its ferry was to early San Rafael commerce. It was quicker to travel to the point than to send a shallow draft schooner or steamer up the sloughs to the town. The SR&SQ left downtown from Second Street and made a beeline for the point. By the time the map was made, it had been brought into the North Pacific Coast Railroad as a branch line. Out on the point we can see how the tracks left land on a long trestle to reach the wharf at Agnes Island. Today, motorists on Andersen Drive are following the exact route of the old SR&SQ Railroad, at least to the sanitation plant.
The second rail line came in 1884, only five years before the map was made. Peter Donahue’s San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad ran trains from its ferry terminal at Tiburon to San Rafael, Petaluma and northward. Construction required crossing the tracks of the SR&SQRR at a sharp diagonal. The SF&NP turned south at Simms Island and entered a tunnel, today known as the Cal Park Tunnel. The SMART train uses these tracks today; the diagonal crossing still exists, but it is Anderson Drive rather than the San Quentin tracks that converge and cross the tracks here.
The 1889 map shows only two areas of residential development. Picnic Valley was one of the early San Rafael suburban neighborhoods, and remains today a quiet nook a bit away from the bustle of town. The distinctive pattern of Picnic Avenue and the return at Bungalow Avenue are relics of the past.
To the southeast is another development, and its bones still exist. Look at Google Maps and you will see the 1889 roads, but fragmented. The County Road is now Auburn Street, and the roads above on the hill are today’s Orange Street, Rose Street, Albion and Altena streets, and Tiburon Blvd. The latter was constructed at the turn of the twentieth century, and appears to be the roadway penciled in at the southern edge of the development-it was the road from San Rafael to Tiburon 100 years ago, and added to this map. The hairpin turn at the northwest edge of the development was scrapped, and the lower part of Orange Street is indicated on Google Maps as only a “paper road” right of way.
Dodge’s map is a fascinating look at early eastern San Rafael. It is in good condition, is accurate, and gives historians a credible record of the setting. Dodge’s collection of maps and surveys is archived at the Map Annex, and available online for all to see and learn from.
Marin historian Dewey Livingston is the map archivist at the California Room’s Map & Special Collections Annex.
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
