4. Rancho Punta de los Reyes 



On March 17, 1836, James Richard Berry applied for and was granted 

 35,000 acres. Berry, a Mexican national of Irish descent who had served Mexico 

 as a colonel during the Spanish War, named his domain Rancho Punta de los 

 Reyes. Berry visited Point Reyes with Captain of the Port of San Francisco, 

 William L. Richardson, who related many years later: 



He came to me in the early part of 1836 with 

 recommendations from the then commandant of 

 California, Don Nicolas Gutierrez, to pass him over to 

 the north side of the Bay of San Francisco . . . in 

 order to select some land granted to him for his 

 services as a Colonel in the Mexican Army and I did 

 so. He returned to my house at Yerba Buena [San 

 Francisco] about three weeks afterwards on his road 

 to Monterey. He came back again about a month 

 after with his grant to take possession of his land at 

 Punta de Reyes, which is in what [is] now Marin 

 County. 27 



Berry chose property comprising practically the entire Olema Valley from what 

 he evidently considered to be Garcia's grant north, including what would 

 eventually become the town of Olema. The northern section of two leagues 

 extended up the shores of Tomales Bay, including the area that would become 

 the town of Inverness fifty years later. Berry brought cattle and heifers to the 

 ranch and built a one-story house in the northern Olema Valley, at a location 

 on Olema Creek reportedly adjacent to the future town of Olema, on the main 

 road, on the west bank of a stream which fed into Tomales Bay. Berry filed a 

 juridical possession and survey with the military commander at Sonoma which 

 was later found to be invalid. 28 



Berry sold the two leagues on Tomales Bay in 1838 to Joseph E. Snook, a 

 naturalized Mexican citizen and veteran sea captain and merchant of the Pacific 



27 Testimony of William A. Richardson in Land Case 418 ND, copies at National Park Service, 

 Western Regional Office, San Francisco. 



"Testimony of William Richardson, October 27, 1853, in Land Case 418 ND Punta de Reyes, 

 Bd 7, October 27, 1853, No. 43, Bowman, "Testimony" p. 115, Bancroft Library, U. C. Berkeley; 

 Jack Mason, Point Reves. The Solemn Land (Inverness: North Shore Books, Third Edition, 1970), 

 p.21; Becker, Point Reves. p. 42-43. 



18 



