On Tuesday afternoon, July 2, 1929, smoke appeared near the railroad tracks on Mount Tamalpais. By eight o'clock that evening, embers were blowing across the entire town. The postmaster in Sausalito, five miles away, picked charred wood out of his dooryard.
What saved downtown Mill Valley was the wind. Around eight that evening it shifted, blowing in from the bay and turning the fire back on itself. By that point, crews from San Francisco, Corte Madera, Larkspur, Ross, San Anselmo and San Rafael had lined the business streets with hose and were playing water across rooftops. Five hundred soldiers arrived from the Presidio. Between two and three thousand men fought through the night.
By Wednesday morning, a hundred chimneys stood on Summit Hill with nothing beneath them.
The burnt ruins of 20 Magee (now 409 Magee) with only the tall brick chimney standing after the fire in July 1929. (Courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Library)
The losses were specific. The historic home of Miss Sylvia Bishop went first. The residences of W.H.R. Nostrand, L.F. Hamilton, B.P. Upham and Dr. A. Barkan followed. Mayor Adolph Eberhart estimated at least 100 homes destroyed and total losses between $500,000 and $1 million. Later accounts put the number at 117.
Inside the larger story were smaller ones. At the Hamilton house, a nearly helpless resident was carried out on an improvised stretcher. On the mountain, one relief engine on the railroad was trapped by the flames and abandoned. The railroad ran again briefly after the fire. It closed permanently in 1930.
Source: Mill Valley Record, July 5, 1929, via the California Digital Newspaper Collection (cdnc.ucr.edu). It went to press on July 5 with the fire not yet fully extinguished. Some details in that first account may not have survived later scrutiny. Later home count of 117 from Mill Valley Historical Society (mvhistory.org).
