Pacific Coast Railroad, which bypassed Olema and provided Galen Burdell the 

 opportunity to build a new town called Point Reyes Station two miles to the 

 north. 75 



a. Overland Travel 



The aboriginal transportation route through the Olema Valley is 

 undocumented, but probably followed the banks of Pine Gulch and Olema 

 Creeks for much of the way. What would have been a foot trail was no doubt 

 altered with the arrival of wagons and ox teams by the 1840s. The 

 appointment of road overseers contributed to the improvement and 

 maintenance of local roads, but no complete map of the precise routes previous 

 to 1867 has been found. 



One well-documented route is the portion of the San Rafael Road or Old 

 Olema Trail that connected Olema to Lagunitas Creek in the vicinity of the 

 Jewell Ranch. It is unknown whether this was the Indian trail, or was adopted 

 by grantees and settlers; there is not much doubt that this is the route used by 

 Rafael Garcia and other settlers of the 1840s. The trail left the site of Olema 

 near the present Druid's Hall and headed almost due east up the back of the 

 ridge to the summit, then down a spur to Lagunitas Creek at a point north of 

 the Jewell ranch house; Garcia's 1856 land sale to Daniel and Nelson Olds used 

 the trail as the north boundary of the property, and fence lines remain, 

 separating the Mclsaac/Merz/Stewart grazing permits. The route remains in 

 use as a right-of-way for PG&E utility poles. 76 



Responding to demands of rural residents for better public roadways, 

 county engineers surveyed and constructed a new county road from Bolinas to 

 Olema, then east to near Lagunitas, in 1867. According to the survey by county 

 surveyor Hiram Austin, the official road followed the previously used route with 

 a few exceptions: 1) Austin devised a new route up "Strain's Hill" north of 



75 Mason, Historian, p. 178; Munro-Fraser, Marin County, pp. 264-269; Jack Mason, 

 Earthquake Bay. A History of Tomales Bay, California (Inverness: North Shore Books, 1976), pp. 

 78, 95. 105; Louise Teather, Place Names of Marin (San Francisco: Scottwall Associates, 1986), pp. 

 11, 21, 31-32. 



76 Deeds Book H, p. 77, MCRO; Payne J. Shatter, "Early Roads in Marin," San Rafael 

 Independent. November 23, 1929. 



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