The Palace of Fine Arts was one of ten palaces at the heart of the [1915] Panama-Pacific Exhibition, which also included the exhibit palaces of Education, Liberal Arts, Manufactures, Varied Industries, Agriculture, Food Products, Transportation, Mines and Metallurgy and the Palace of Machinery. The Palace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck, who took his inspiration from Roman and Greek architecture in designing what was essentially a fictional ruin from another time.
The underside of the Palace rotunda's dome features eight large insets, which originally contained murals by Robert Reid. Four depicted the conception and birth of Art, "its commitment to the Earth, its progress and acceptance by the human intellect," and four the "golds" of California (poppies, citrus fruits, metallic gold, and wheat).
source: Wikipedia
Each year, beginning in November, endangered coho salmon, and, in December, threatened steelhead trout return to Lagunitas Creek from the ocean to spawn, or lay eggs, before their own life cycle ends. The adult spawning runs coincide with the rainy season and continue for three to four months, sometimes longer. Lagunitas Creek, which originates on MMWD watershed land on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, is considered the home of one of the healthiest salmon populations in Central California. source: M.M.W.D.
Marin County had embraced a favorable growth plan in the 1950s and 60s to benefit real estate developers and speculators, with assistance from the state department of transportation. With the influx of new residents, many of them affluent, property taxes for the county as a whole dramatically increased. At the same time, dairy operators nationally saw prices for the products drop considerably. Dairies regionally had been closing or consolidating for sometime, but the combination of economics, competition, labor costs, taxes, environmental regulation, and land values accelerated the pace. Point Reyes dairies feared the loss of the quality of life as much as declining profitability. If more dairies closed their doors, the fear rose that the supporting dairy industry infrastructure might collapse. Most important, the ranchers valued the pastoral landscape that their parents and grandparents had set roots in, often back to the nineteenth century. source: N.P.S.
In order to secure their place at Point Reyes, the dairy and cattle ranchers formed an uneasy alliance with the Sierra Club in hopes of preserving their ranches and west Marin open space. The National Park Service had actively sought to establish a literal beachhead on the California coast, and Point Reyes in particular, as early as 1936. Washington was approached to help solve the pressing needs of many local and national constituencies. The compromise hammered out by Congress and signed by President Kennedy in 1962 explicitly provided for the retention of the ranches in a designated pastoral zone, with ranchers signing 25-30 year reservations of use and occupancy leases, and special use permits for cattle grazing. Over the ensuing ten years, NPS acquired the 17 remaining operating ranches and the property of the abandoned ranches. source: N.P.S.
In 2002, six historic Shafter / Howard era dairies are operating in the park. An additional nine occupied historic ranches and former ranch sites run beef cattle. The Pierce Point Ranch on Tomales Point ceased operations in 1973. Three years later, Congress authorized creation of the wilderness area incorporating that ranch as habitat for the reintroduction of tule elk. Beginning in 1980, NPS invested in the rehabilitation of the ranch core, citing it as the best example of a nineteenth century west Marin dairy ranch. Pierce Point Ranch was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985, and was subsequently opened to the public as an interpretive site.
The former “W” or Bear Valley Ranch was early on designated as the new National Seashore’s headquarters. Visitors to the Bear Valley Visitor Center pass through the former ranch core, adaptively reused for park administration and support services. The visitor center itself is a new addition, designed to echo the surrounding agricultural landscape and local history. Plans call for seventeen ranches on Point Reyes to be included on the National Register as a historic landscape district. source: N.P.S.
Imagine what this windswept, fog-enshrouded landscape may have looked like almost two hundred years ago, before the first cattle made their way here. Imagine Coast Miwok coexisting with tule elk, grizzly bear, mountain lion, whales, dolphins, countless birds and their innumerable prey species. Then imagine the early beginnings of these formerly remote ranches as you drive by enroute to the lighthouse or the tule elk preserve. Perhaps you can imagine in 1916 Pierce Ranch school teacher Helen Smith walking into the creamery to scoop a small cup of cream from the cooling pans to pour over her breakfast pancakes. Her experience is a far cry from our contemporary neatly wrapped packages of butter and milk purchased at the local supermarket. If, on your way home from Point Reyes, you should stop to treat yourself with ice cream, don’t be surprised if several days ago it started as grass and a cow you just passed. source: N.P.S.
