A Brief History:

Geography: The San Geronimo Valley is a charming and serene inland valley roughly equidistant to San Francisco and the Point Reyes Peninsula. Equal parts modest and grand, the Valley encompasses a range of varied ecosystems, including coastal grassland, oak woodland, northern coastal scrub, redwood forest, and vernal pool systems, which form a natural tapestry throughout and between the hills of San Geronimo Ridge to the south, Mt. Barnabe to the west, Dickson Ridge to the north, and Whites Hill and Loma Alta to the east.

First Peoples: The Coast Miwok Native Americans inhabited the San Geronimo Valley in relative peace for thousands years before Spanish settlers brought their mission system to the San Francisco Bay Area and disrupted the Miwok’s traditional ways of life. With a population that has been estimated in the many thousands, the culturally unified Miwok lived in politically autonomous permanent villages dubbed racherias by the Spanish, as well as smaller seasonal settlements aligned with tending to and harvesting natural resources. Today, Coast Miwok activists preserve their culture.

Ranching: It is thought that La Cañada de San Geronimo became a ranching outpost of the colonizing mission system of Mission San Rafael, until the fall of the mission system in the 1830s. In the years before California joined the United States, the Valley was granted to Mexican soldier Rafael Cacho, who appears to have been in the area as early as 1839. Cacho transferred ‘Rancho San Geronimo’ to Joseph W. Revere, a naval officer who was the grandson of Paul Revere. The bulk of the land in the Valley then changed hands a number of times before arriving under the ownership of Adolph Mailliard, whose family owned Rancho San Geronimo until the early 1910s. Other ranch families included the Roy and Nunez families, as well as the Dickson and Ottolini families - who are both still operating ranches.

Development: A group of developers under the name the Lagunitas Development Company then purchased from the Mailliard heirs what we now know as Woodacre, San Geronimo, Forest Knolls and Lagunitas. They created the names Woodacre and Forest Knolls in the process of subdividing the Valley. The area grew slowly and mostly consisted of summer homes until development picked up markedly following World War II. The Valley became more suburbanized at this point, until in the late 1960s an exodus of progressive young people from San Francisco changed the character of the area once again.

Much of the original spirit of this place remains in this portion of Marin that has managed to maintain its rural character, despite many threats of major development.