Marin County And Its History
The history of Marin County started with its creation in February 18, 1850 and just after the adoption of the Constitution of the State of California in 1849. Marin County had the historic distinction of becoming one of the state’s original 27 counties and that was several months before the state was admitted into the Union. Currently, Marin County is one of 58 counties in California and is located in the North San Francisco Bay Area and across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city of San Francisco.
San Rafael is where Marin County’s local government resides, its most recent population count just exceeded 260,000 and the County’s largest employer is the county government itself.
Marin County has been well endowed by nature as well as by society at large. On the one hand, nature has bestowed Marin County with unsurpassed beauty reflected in sites such as the Muir Woods National Monument, the Marin Headlands, Stinson Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore and, its highest peak which claims to be the birthplace for mountain biking, Mount Tamalpais.
Recent national statistics attest to Marin County’s economic affluence by claiming it to have the highest annual per capital income with just under $50,000 per person and the third highest mean personal income falling slightly short of $90,000.
No one knows for sure how Marin County acquired its name but there are a few theories that ring true. The first theory claims that Marin County was named after Chief Marin, a legendary Coast Miwok chief who fought against the Spaniards in an attempt to keep them of his lands. The second and equally convincing theory claims that Marin County’s name is just a shortened version of the bay between San Pedro Point and San Quentin Point which in 1775 was named Baha de Nuestra Seora Del Rosario la Marinera.
The Native American nation called the Miwok was subdivided into sub-groups and one of its largest lived in the territory that is today’s Marin County and was known as the Coast Miwok. The Coast Miwok also dwelled in the south part of Sonoma County. According to researcher, history of the Coast Miwok in this region dates back roughly five thousand years and their population which has been estimated in the thousands was scattered among at least 600 villages. The Coast Miwok lived a peaceful existence off the plentiful land by hunting and gathering. The historical tragedy is that very few Coast Miwok still live today and even fewer of them have any knowledge of their amazing past.
Many European explorers, privateers and missionaries began flocking to the region as early as the sixteenth century. Sir Francis Drake landed in 1579 and claimed the land for the then king of England. Following in Drake’s footsteps, a Spanish explorer named Sebastian Cermeno docked his ship in what is now called Drake’s Bay in 1595.
Marin County of then began with indigenous tribes but the Spaniards turned it into a long lasting European settlement by erecting Mission San Rafael Arcngel in 1817 which is still now standing in the center of San Rafael’s downtown and which was prompted by the Russian construction of Fort Ross in Sonoma County.