This photograph was taken more than 100 years ago, but for most Marin residents is instantly recognizable as the downtown Mill Valley train station. There are scores of passengers queuing up for the train with a few late arrivals sprinting across the tracks. The redwoods in the center of the photograph still stand today separating the Depot Bookstore & Café parking lot from Miller Avenue. This original downtown station was constructed in 1900 when Mill Valley was still called Eastland; 26 years after the North Pacific Coast Railroad (NPCRR) had first laid narrow-gauge tracks from Sausalito to San Rafael. Within a couple of years, trains were running all the way to Duncan Mills in Sonoma County to carry north coast timber and dairy products back to San Francisco. Passenger service to Cazadero in Sonoma County was added in 1886. Before the downtown station was built, the only Mill Valley station in those earlier years was a junction stop near present-day Tamalpais High School.
At the same time, visitors from around the Bay were also flocking to town to ride the Mill Valley and Mount Tamalpais Scenic Railway to the top of the Mt. Tamalpais. Nicknamed, “The Crookedest Railroad in the World,” its name was changed to the Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods Railroad when the company laid tracks through to the redwood groves of Muir Woods. Both companies used the downtown station seen in the photograph. In 1902, the NPCRR was sold and became the North Shore Railroad (NSRR). Within a year the NSRR had converted the old narrow-gauge lines to standard-gauge and added an electric “third rail” design (seen in the photograph) for service from Sausalito to Fairfax and through to San Rafael. In 1907 the railroad was reorganized in a Santa Fe/Southern Pacific partnership and renamed The Northwestern Pacific Railroad.
The original downtown station was demolished and replaced in 1929 by the mission-revival building that still stands on the site today. Less than 15 years later, as automobiles and buses became the preferred mode of travel, commuter rail service throughout Marin was abandoned bringing an end to Marin’s heyday of the “Iron Horse.”
History Watch is written by Scott Fletcher, a volunteer at the Marin History Museum, marinhistory.org. Images included in History Watch are available for purchase by calling 415-382-1182 or by email at info@marinhistory.org.
