History of Agricultural Land Use in West Marin
Land Stewardship by Coast Miwok
Archeological evidence suggests that for at least 5,000 years prior to 1800 Coast Miwok people lived throughout Marin County. The Coast Miwok were the second biggest band of Miwok native people. They were divided into smaller tribal groups, each consisting of sixty to a few hundred individuals.
Tribal Groups Comprising the Coast Miwok
Tule elk
California oat grass, a common native plant
Coast Miwok lived alongside herds of tule elk, deer and antelope, grizzly bears, mountain lions, and many other animal species. They survived by foraging, hunting, and fishing. In addition to gathering oysters, clams, crab, kelp, and abalone from the ocean, they foraged for acorns, buckeyes, hazel nuts, and bay nuts as well as berries, bulbs and tubers. They devised traps to capture quail, woodpeckers and rabbits, and they hunted deer with bow and arrow.
Diverse native plant as well as animal species flourished under their stewardship. Coast Miwok periodically ignited fires in grasslands to spur growth of natural grasses and control the encroachment of coastal scrub. These practices complemented the effects of grazing by elk and deer. In Muir Woods it is possible to see fire scars on some redwood trees, evidence of cultural burns.
“Cultural burns passed down through generations have benefited both lands and people by improving soil quality, spurring growth of certain plant species and creating a healthy and resilient landscape" (source: National Park Service)
Prescribed burn in pine forest.
Coast Miwok People Seen through European Eyes
These drawings of Coast Miwok were created by Louis Choris, a young German-Russian artist who was the official draughtsman on Russian naval officer Otto Von Kotzebue’s sea voyage throughout the Pacific from 1815 to 1818.
The vessel, with only twenty-seven men, was attempting to find a northwest passage across the Arctic Ocean and explore the lands bordering the Pacific Ocean
Early European Explorers and Spanish Occupation
Europeans’ contact with California began in the mid 1530s when Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes landed briefly in Baja California. In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo ventured farther north, making it as far as Monterey Bay or possibly up to the San Francisco Bay.
In later years, other European and Russian ships also landed along the coast of Central California. The explorer known to have come as far north as present-day Marin is Francis Drake. He landed at Drake’s Bay in 1570, and remained for over a month, repairing his ship and exploring inland as far as Inverness Ridge and Olema Valley.
More than 200 years passed before any concerted effort was made by the Spanish government to establish permanent settlements along the coast of Alta California.
In the 1760s the Spanish government became concerned that England, Russia, and other European countries could attempt to take over its North American territories. As a first step, the government supported Franciscan priests, led by Junipero Serra, in establishing a string of missions with the goal of converting the native people to Catholicism. Each mission formed the core of a Spanish settlement and was protected by a contingent of soldiers.
In all, 21 missions were created along the coast, beginning with San Diego de Alcala in 1769 and ending in San Francisco de Asis in 1823. Mission San Rafael was built in 1817.
To further guard against encroachment from other countries, Spain divided Alta California into four districts, each controlled by a military fort, or presidio. The four presidios were established in what is now San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara.
Hernando Cortes
Mission San Rafael
Coast Miwok at a Spanish settlement (Louis Choris)
The period of colonial expansion by Spain was devastating to the indigenous population of coastal California.
Native people were forcibly removed from their own communities and brought to the military installations and missions. Attempts were made to inculcate in them the religious practices and cultural beliefs of their captors. The Miwok were put to work constructing and maintaining buildings as well as tending fields and livestock.
De facto slaves, they were subject to malnutrition and physical violence. Many died of diseases imported by the Spanish. These factors, along with the effects of displacement from home, family, and culture, resulted in the near extinction of the Coast Miwok and other groups in California during the 50 year mission-building period.
San Francisco Presidio by Louis Choris (1816).
Scientific Evidence of Genocide
Anthropologist Brian Codding at the University of Utah and his colleagues compared burial remains among the indigenous people buried along the central coast of California in the period before and after the establishment of the Spanish missions. They found that the average age of death had dropped sharply beginning in 1770, when the missions were being established.
An excerpt from their article:
“Of paramount significance to the onset of major depopulation were the social and living conditions imposed by the Spanish after AD 1770 that could not have been worse in their potential to encourage disease. Native people were settled into crowded communities adjacent to the missions, and as many died, the Spanish sought new recruits from further afield.”
Read more about the research, published in 2021 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here.
Mexican Occupation and Annexation by US
California became part of Mexico following the 1821 Mexican revolution, and during the next 24 years the missions were secularized. Additionally, large land grants, or ranchos, were awarded to prominent Mexican citizens.
Marin was divided into 21 land grants, which were primarily used for cattle grazing. Some of the Coast Miwok who had survived the years of Spanish colonization worked in the fields and cared for livestock on the ranchos.
Remains of Camilo Ynitia’s adobe in Olompali
When the Mexican government occupied Alta California, one exception to the practice of distributing land to Mexican residents was the acquisition in 1843 by a Coast Miwok, Camilo Ynitia, of a large tract in Olompali, the site of a large Coast Miwok village. In 1860, descents of Ynitia sold the land to an American attorney, and the last of aboriginal Olompali passed into American ownership.
In another exceptional case, 1835, a group of Miwok formerly associated with Mission San Rafael was given 80,000 acres of mission lands in Nicasio by the Mexican government. However, the Miwok claim was rejected by the Public Land Commission in 1855.
Relations between the U.S. and Mexico became extremely strained in the 1840s amid rumors that Mexico planned to cede California to England to help pay off its debt to the British government.
Skirmishes ensued between American settlers in Northern California and the Mexican military, including the “Bear-Flag Revolt” in Sonoma in 1846.
At the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848, California was officially annexed by the US, becoming a state in 1850.
Peter Burnett (pictured above) was the first governor of California. In 1850, he proclaimed the following:
“We have suddenly spread ourselves over the country in every direction and appropriated whatever portion of it we please to ourselves without their (the native people’s) consent and without compensation. A war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.”
In 1880 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reported only 60 Coast Miwok living in Marin County.
The Gold Rush and Beginning of Dairy Farming
Amid the chaotic tension between the Mexican government and California settlers, the Gold Rush was just beginning.
Johann Sutter, a Swiss businessman, built a fort on a 48,000 acre site at the junction of the Sacramento and American Rivers. He discovered gold on the property in 1948, triggering a massive influx of gold-seekers from around the world.
In 1949, approximately 40,000 people traveled to California by ship and another 30,000 came westward in covered wagons.
Some fortune seekers realized that striking it rich in the goldfields was far from being a sure bet. Those with a background in agriculture saw the promise of West Marin for cattle ranching and dairy farming. Its open grassy landscape and cool, moist climate was likely to support abundant foraging for cattle, a long growing season, and a sufficient supply of water.
Although a treaty between the US and Mexico formally protected the legal rights of Mexican landowners subsequent to California’s annexation, many could not afford the legal cost of claiming their land and most of it was purchased by more affluent American and European newcomers.
Transition from Ranchos to Small Dairy Farms
One of the largest of the new American landowners in West Marin was the Shafter family, who in 1857 acquired a 60,000 acre rancho on the Point Reyes peninsula.
The family divided the land into 30 parcels labeled with letters of the alphabet, built ranch buildings on them, and leased them out to tenant farmers.
These ranches were initially quite successful selling dairy products in San Francisco and beyond. The potential problem posed by the remote location of Point Reyes was overcome by delivering product to San Francisco initially in small schooners and eventually by train and ferry.
Point Reyes dairies produced what was widely considered to be the highest quality butter in the state for the last half of the 1800s.
The historic D Ranch
The historic B ranch
By 1900, however, it became difficult to operate the Shafter dairy farms at a profit. Building damage from the 1906 earthquake contributed to their demise. Improvements in transportation in throughout the Bay Area had increased the competition with dairies in other regions.
Additionally, ineffective land management by some farmers had degraded the quality and quantity of pasture land for grazing.
The Depression was the final blow to the system as it had existed since the 1850s.
Eventually, land speculators purchased the large tracts of land, broke them into small ranches, and sold them to new farmers.
For a comprehensive account of this period, check out this article by the National Park Service.
The Pierce Point Ranch
Resistance to Urban Development in West Marin
In spite of the challenges, dairy farms and cattle ranches continued to operate across much of West Marin for the next several decades.
In the early 1960s, however, County planners, hoping to benefit from a growing taste for suburban living, developed plans for new cities and towns throughout Marin. Some politicians and environmentalists moved quickly to protect parts of coastal Marin. In 1962, Clem Miller, a member of the US Congress representing Marin, introduced the bill establishing Point Reyes National Seashore and protecting the peninsula from development proposed for the slopes above Drake’s Bay.
In West Marin, the County envisioned a city of 150,000 on the east shore of Tomales Bay, as well as marinas in Inverness and Marshall, all accessible by a four-lane highway to Point Reyes Station.
In Southern Marin a developer named Thomas Frouge, funded by Gulf Oil, created plans for a community on the Marin Headlands. His intention was to build medium-density housing for 30,000 people. After years of debate, local support for the project diminished, and in 1972 the site was purchased by the Nature Conservancy and became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
In West Marin, many farmers feared that the dairy industry was on the brink of collapse. In addition to depending on dairy for their livelihood, they valued the pastoral landscape that had, in many cases, been home for multiple generations of their family.
The dairy farmers and cattle ranchers ultimately decided to form an alliance with the Sierra Club in order to preserve their homes and fields. A deal developed by Congress and signed by President Kennedy in 1962 provided for the retention of the ranches in a designated pastoral zone, with ranchers signing 25–30 year reservations of use and occupancy leases, and special use permits for cattle grazing. Over the ensuing ten years, the National Park Service acquired the 17 remaining operating ranches and the property of the abandoned ranches.
Phyllis Faber (left) and Ellen Straus
In 1973, in a further bid to control development in Marin, the County Board of Supervisors voted to divide the county into three corridors: coastal/recreational, inland/rural, and city-centered. To prevent housing subdivisions from being built in West Marin, the plan instituted A-60 zoning. Owners of property zoned for agricultural use were allowed just one house for every 60 acres of property.
But demand for housing was high, and real estate prices rose quickly in the populated areas of Marin. Purchasing a 60-acre tract of land in the rural corridor and building a new home became as affordable as buying a much smaller house in the city-centered areas. For some cash-strapped farmers, the prospect of dividing their land into smaller parcels and selling them was appealing. It became apparent that zoning would not be enough to protect the farms from suburbanization.
In response to this threat, the first farmland trust in the nation, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT), was founded in 1980 by Ellen Straus, a dairy farmer, and Phyllis Faber, a botanist, along with a coalition of ranchers, environmentalists and community leaders. Since then, MALT has contributed to the preservation of Marin’s agricultural community in a thriving natural environment. Learn more about MALT here.
Partial Recognition of Coast Miwok
By 1958, the federal government had officially terminated the recognition of Coast Miwok people as well as many other tribes.
However, in 2000, the Coast Miwok were once again recognized as a tribe by the government, which granted the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (formerly known as the Federated Coast Miwok) full rights and privileges afforded federally recognized tribes. Currently there are almost 500 members registered with the tribe.
In 2023, the Coast Miwok Tribal Council obtained title to 26 acres of ancestral land in Nicasio. They plan to use it for practicing cultural and spiritual traditions, offering educational programs, and sharing indigenous practices of land restoration and soil resilience. The property is near the site of one of the last Coast Miwok settlements in Marin known as ‘Etcha Tamal by the Coast Miwok. The tribal group that lived in ‘Etcha Tamal was the Huukuiko Band.
The Tribal Council is separate from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. The Council is recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) as lineal descendants of Marin Coast Miwok people.
Newly purchased land
Joe Sanchez (right) Miwok Tribal Council member with Peter Mollison, seller of ancestral land
"More than 175 years ago, this rich and sacred land was taken from the people by one alien government and then another…Now we are approaching the time where some of this land can be returned to the Huukuiko people and their sisters and brothers. This is right."
Dewey Livingston, Marin historian