Can you name the Marin County town in the above photo? And the year the photo was taken? Give up? Don’t blame you. It’s Point Reyes Station and the year was 1922. It’s one of hundreds of photos, maps and anecdotes that are packed into local historian Dewey Livingston’s 598-page book, Point Reyes and Tomales Bay: A History of the Land and Its People.
Here’s how Livingston describes how much that area “liked” their alcohol:
Point Reyes residents liked their drink. Alcohol was all over in the town saloons and homes, on the ranches, at the lighthouse, with the summer people. In the early 1900s there was a bar in the Salmina brothers’ Marshall Store and one down the road at Shields’ hotel. There was also the Western Hotel and a little three-stool bar in the Point Reyes Emporium in Point Reyes Station. There were a few saloon-hotels in Olema and one in Tocaloma. In Inverness, people drank at home for lack of a bar until the 1940s. Italian-Americans made their own wine. All the local stores sold liquor, wine and beer. Then came the National Prohibition Act of 1919. No liquor, no beer, no wine. However, Point Reyes was a near-perfect location for bringing in the booze, with isolated coves, piers and farms, ample water supply and a dairy industry in distress that left barns empty. Some people built and maintained stills in their basements while speakeasies catered to the thirsty populace supplied by bootleggers and rumrunners. In West Marin it seems most activity fooled the feds.
Livingston’s book also includes passages on the Coast Miwok native people; the creation of the area’s innovative dairy industry; how nearby towns and villages differed from each other; and how the railroad’s arrival and demise impacted the region. Livingston, 72, and his wife Kerry have lived in the West Marin community of Inverness for 43 years. He helped create the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History and has worked for years as a historical researcher for Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Point Reyes and Tomales Bay is available at www.jackmasonmuseum.org and bookstores throughout Marin.
