San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Marin getaway just right when S.F. is too much
Sometimes the city gets to you. Too much pavement. Too many people. Too much.
It happened to me in midweek. I was on an errand just outside Mill Valley that was finished earlier than I expected. I had a couple of extra hours before I was due back in San Francisco, and it was one of those warm days we sometimes get in midwinter. Free time like that is a surprise, a gift.
Perfect, I thought, for what Donna Faure at the Point Reyes National Seashore calls “a slow meander in the woods.” Point Reyes was too far away, but I knew just the spot, so I drove up from Tamalpais Valley to the Panoramic Highway, a long and winding road that runs over the south side of Mount Tamalpais to Stinson Beach. After about 20 minutes I parked opposite the Mountain Home Inn, which has been around in various forms since 1912.
Off to the right is a dirt road that leads north. It’s a fire road now, but it used to be part of a scenic railroad. It’s a perfect little stroll, kind of a gentle introduction to Tamalpais.
Places like Mount Tamalpais are treasures of the region. Five minutes into the walk, you are away from the highway on the edge of a redwood forest.
It’s an easy walk, the dirt road curving upward. On weekends there are lots of bikes and people and dogs. Not so much at midweek.
With the long afternoon shadows of winter, the woods seemed deep. There were places around the curves where the trees opened up and you could see down the mountain slope to the towns at the foot of Tamalpais and San Francisco Bay beyond. I could see a tanker heading out to sea, a ferry heading to Sausalito. In the far distance was San Francisco, its towers reflecting the afternoon sun.
There was no wind, but in the still air if I stopped and listened carefully I could hear the city. It’s odd, I thought, but from miles away I could hear San Francisco, a dull roar, like a million people talking far away. You may be out of the city but it never lets you escape.
You can get the illusion of escape on this short walk though. It was a family favorite when I was a small boy. As years went by, I would take my daughters when they were little girls. It’s easy, I’d say, an adventure, not far and still far away.
This used to be a railroad track, I’d tell them, and if we were lucky, we might find pieces of the old railroad, especially after a rain. Sometimes we’d find rusty old railroad spikes or bolts that tied the rails together.
Sometimes we’d come around a curve and come upon a flock of quail, maybe even a deer. Once I thought I saw a fox. My daughters told me they’d seen snakes. Who knew what lurked in the shadows of the forest?
There were two small creeks, quiet now the other day. They must have been roaring in the January rains. And around a last curve, walkers come upon forks in the road, and beside the northerly road, a crumbling concrete structure, low and curved.
This is all that is left of Mesa Station, part of the old Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods railroad. It was a junction, where trains heading up from Mill Valley to the top of the mountain met trains headed down on a branch line to Muir Woods.
The afternoon’s walk was along what had been the railroad’s Muir Woods branch. Mesa was a busy place on a summer’s day 100 years ago when the railroad was a world famous tourist attraction. There were 281 curves on the way up Tamalpais — “The Crookedest Railroad in the World” it called itself. A ride on it was “the Greatest Sight Seeing Trip on Earth.”
The trains met at Mesa. Fred Runner, who has studied the railroad, remembers being told about train time at Mesa. “I spent a lot of time talking to Bill Provines, who worked on the railroad. He’d bring the morning train up from Mill Valley and stop at Mesa. He’d tell me about it. Some passengers would change trains here across the concrete platform — people going from Mill Valley to Muir Woods, others switching to the train to the summit. It was like a ballet, Bill said, like a mountain railroad ballet.’’
I never saw the railroad myself, but I heard the stories and imagined the little trains. Good roads and changing times made it obsolete, and it was torn up in 1930. The crumbling concrete platform at Mesa and the flourishing West Point Inn are what is visible of the old line still. And the railroad grade, 8 miles of dirt road, is still there and open to the public.
Runner and some associates are hoping to bring back the last remaining locomotive from the mountain railroad — the 103-year-old Engine No. 9. It’s now being restored to its 1920 appearance. They haven’t found a place in Marin to display No. 9, but they have high hopes. “It’s a process,” Runner said.
But that’s another story. On a quiet afternoon when the city gets to be too much, you can take a walk where the train once ran. A small adventure.