Fire at Tocaloma!

Where? We are guessing that many of our readers have never heard of Tocaloma. It was a thriving small community in it's day, but is mostly known by a small sign on the road today in West Marin. Maybe you've noticed it while driving through on Sir Francis Drake, west of Samuel P. Taylor State Park, or maybe not. It was the location of, or near, the site of several large fires, in 1916 and 1945, including the one we are profiling this week that burned in December of 1916, on the day after Christmas.

​The Train ran right past it. The what? Yes, passenger and freight trains traveled through West Marin back then, as in much of Marin in general. It existed long before Kent Lake was built, and long before the State Park existed. One could take the ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito, and then climb on a train to Mill Valley and go to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, and take the stage to Bolinas, or ride a gravity car down into Muir Woods. Or, take the train from Sausalito  through Mill Valley, Corte Madera, Larkspur and the upper Ross Valley, going out through Fairfax, then through the Bothin Tunnel, and eventually to Point Reyes Station through Tocaloma, and on to Cazadero.
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Let's travel back in time to Tocaloma in it's heyday, thanks to our good friend Dewey Livingston, Historian and Author. Dewey has contributed an excerpt about Tocaloma from a book he is currently writing on the history of the Point Reyes area. He expects it to be published next year, stay tuned. The story is listed under our Major Fire, Incidents Menu>Structure Fires>1916 Tocaloma Hotel, or you can click below to go to the page.

Click here to go to the Tocaloma Hotel Fire Page