On June 29, 1843, John Thomas Reed died at his ranch at the age of 38. He is the reason this place is called Mill Valley.
Reed was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1805 and arrived in the Bay Area in 1826 after years in Mexico, where he had become a Spanish speaker and eventually a Mexican citizen. He married Hilaria Sanchez, daughter of the commandant of the San Francisco Presidio, in 1836. In the mid-1830s he built a sawmill on Cascade Creek - the first in Marin County. The creek and the canyon took the mill's name, and eventually the town did too.
John Reed built this adobe on what is now La Goma Avenue and Locke Lane around 1836, using beams cut at his sawmill on Cascade Creek. He and his wife Hilaria Sanchez raised four children here. Mt Tamalpais can be seen in the distance. (Photo courtesy of the Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library)
Reed never saw the town. He died 47 years before the land auction that brought the first settlers. He was building a two-story adobe near what is now La Goma and Locke Lane when he fell ill. The attempt to treat him made things worse: a botched phlebotomy severed an artery. His daughter Inez eventually inherited the 646 acres that included what is now Mill Valley and Alto.
The sawmill that bears his legacy stands in Old Mill Park. The creek still runs past it.
Sources: Mill Valley Historical Society (mvhistory.org); Lucretia Little History Room, Mill Valley Public Library
