the Randall Ranch to the north and in the gulches draining into Bolinas Lagoon 

 to the south. 3 



The products of the early sawmills were transported across the future 

 Wilkins Ranch with great difficulty. About twenty years after the heyday of the 

 operations at Dogtown, a writer described the process: 



The logs were drawn to the mills with heavy ox teams 

 on carts, the wheels of which were made from 

 sections sawed off from a log. The lumber was drawn 

 to the head of the bay, and thence lightered out over 

 the bar, where it was loaded on vessels for San 

 Francisco. The transportation of this lumber required 

 from six to eight vessels ranging in carrying capacity 

 from eight thousand to one hundred and twenty 

 thousand feet each. The remnants of the old lighter 

 wharves are all that is now left to mark the site of 

 these busy operations . . . . 4 



De La Montague's debts caught up with the company in May of 1854, 

 when a creditor sued the company for $30,000 with interest. Hiram Grimes 

 bought the company and lease in June of 1854 at a Sheriffs sale for $21,000; by 

 now the assets included two saw mills, six lighters (scows) and a load of lumber 

 at the embarcadero. The records of that year read like a messy stew of sales, 

 mortgages and foreclosures, as Grimes sold his contract and Briones mortgaged 

 the entire property, finally losing it to one Charles Correns who apparently 

 resided in Germany. This January 29, 1856 transaction with Correns set the 

 boundaries of the 2,200 acre tract that would become the Wilkins Ranch and its 

 neighbors, the Bourne and Weeks Ranches on Bolinas Lagoon. 5 



Around all this activity grew the small village of Dogtown. A store, 

 blacksmith shop and school eventually made the town prosperous enough to 

 cause, in 1870, the city fathers to change the name to a more respectable 

 "Woodville." The woodcutting eventually diminished but the townsite west of 



3 Ibid.: Deeds Book A, pp. 216-219,220-222, 248-249, 298, Book B, pp. 18-21, Mortgages Book A, 

 pp. 93-95, 96-100, 102-105, MCRO; Delgado and Haller, Submerged Cultural Resource Assessment 

 p. 120; Oliver Allen Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. 



4 Munro-Fraser, Marin County, p. 269. 



5 Deeds Book A, pp. 463-464, 465-466, Book B, pp. 66-67 and 161-163, Book C, pp. 8-9, 

 Mortgages Book A, pp. 224-225, 227-228, 234-235 and 279-280, MCRO. 



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