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MILL VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETYOn August 22, 1896, a train left Mill Valley and climbed to the summit of Mount Tamalpais for the first time, carrying the residents of a town that was six years old and not yet incorporated. The mountain had always been there. Now there was a way up.
The Tavern of Tamalpais under construction at the summit, circa 1898, with workers arriving by railroad engine. The tavern opened the same year as the railroad, in 1896, and was rebuilt after a kitchen fire destroyed it in 1923. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
Construction had begun six months earlier, on February 11, when the first spade of earth was turned in Blithedale Canyon. By late February, nearly 200 workers were cutting the grade. Residents brought lawsuits to stop them. One man staged what Eleanor "Dolly" Jenkins — whose father Sidney Cushing built the railroad — called a one-man strike. The train was going to run practically underneath his porch. In the end, Jenkins recalled, "They put him on a flatcar and gave him the honor of being the first person to ride on the Mount Tamalpais scenic railway."
The line ran 8.25 miles with 281 curves, 22 trestles and a longest straight stretch of 413 feet — in the middle of a formation called the Double Bow Knot, which Jenkins remembered as a surveying accident: crews working up from the bottom and down from the top found themselves out of alignment and had to improvise. "It's on a little plateau with a wonderful view," she said, "so it was really a happy mistake."
The last spike was driven August 18, 1896. To celebrate, the railroad threw a party under the redwood trees in Blithedale Canyon. Four days later the first passenger train made its run. Regular operations began August 27.
In May 1910 the railroad ran special trains to the summit so Bay Area residents could watch Halley's Comet above the fog, carrying more than 500 people in a single evening. The railroad's character was never just transportation. It was an experience.
Gravity car No. 21 with passengers on the Mount Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railway, 1916. The gravity cars - simple four-wheel coasters with no engine - carried passengers down the mountain from the summit, guided by a brakeman. They were unique to the Tamalpais railroad. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
From the tennis court of the Garden of Allah, high above Blithedale Canyon, Jean Barnard watched the trains wind up the mountain in the 1920s. Her uncle Ralston White had inherited railroad stock from his father and asked her brother each evening how many passengers he had counted. "My uncle would ask my brother every night, 'How many passengers did you see on the train?' And my brother, who had eagle eyes in those days, would tell him."
By 1925 the answer was discouraging enough that William Kent, a leading stockholder, was pushing to convert the roadbed into an automobile road. At a public meeting in July 1926, Blithedale Canyon residents pushed back. One said he didn't want "a stream of automobiles screeching past my door." It didn't matter.
The July 1929 fire damaged the right-of-way. The railroad closed permanently in 1930. The tracks were pulled up and sold.
The Old Railroad Grade trail is what remains.
Sources: Mill Valley Historical Society, Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railroad; Mt. Tamalpais Interpretive Association, Crookedest Railroad; Mill Valley Record, May 27, 1910, Oct 24, 1925, Jul 10, 1926; Eleanor "Dolly" Jenkins oral history, December 1977; Jean Barnard oral history, January 1979, courtesy of Mill Valley Public Library, Lucretia Little History Room.
This story was sponsored by the Mill Valley Historical Society. Visit their new website at mvhistory.org.
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