Point Reyes Light - October 16, 2003
Park service visits tragedy on Hamlet
By Andrew Pridgen
While the Park Service is showing off its restoration of historic buildings throughout the Point Reyes National Seashore, it is in the process of razing the small town of Hamlet on Tomales Bay’s east shore.
Before recorded history, Hamlet was a gathering spot for Coast Miwok Indians. From 1875 to 1930, it was a whistlestop for the Northwestern Pacific narrow-gauge railway; and from the 1930s to the 1980s, it was the site of Jensen’s Oyster Beds (and beer bar).
Despite its small size, the hamlet of Hamlet takes its name from neither its population nor the Shakespearean tragedy. It got the moniker in 1865 when John Hamlet bought the 269-acre site from Henry Halleck. In 1873, Hamlet sold Tomales settler Warren Dutton some of Hamlet’s bay frontage.
Soon after the Jensen family sold their property to the Park Service in 1987, the tiny town located between Marshall and Tomales was declared eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
However, in the decade that followed, the Park Service under Supt. John Sansing ignored Hamlet until its empty buildings had been so badly vandalized the Park Service was able to justify tearing them down
By 1997, it was clear to the public and rangers alike that the remaining 18 bayshore buildings had disintegrated to the point of no return, and a Park Service proposal to raze the historic town was approved.
National Seashore chief of interpretation John Dell’Osso on Wednesday said the curtain will lift next week on the final scene of Hamlet, with the ending expected to take less than three weeks.
Referring to the 1997 decision to destroy the town, Dell’Osso noted, "It’s been some time since we went through the public process.... It was a matter of getting the funding needed. Basically there are only about four or five structures left, [and they have] no flooring and hardly any walls."
Dell’Osso acknowledged that over the past six years, Hamlet has been "let go" to ruin and has turned into "kind of a scary site....
"It’s a nuisance now. There have been fires being lit."
Illegal-dumping problems
Referring to illegal roadside dumping, Dell’Osso said, "People were dumping not just trash, but bigger things like old refrigerators and stoves. It’s not a pleasant place right now."
"There’s a place now where all the windsurfers go just because there’s a makeshift pullout," said fifth-generation Tomales resident Bill Jensen, who is not directly related to the Jensen’s Oyster family.
However, he added, "it looks like a dump there. There’s so much mess and litter there. I don’t think anyone wants more of that."
Dell’Osso said even in the 1980s when the Park Service bought the town, its historic dwellings and retail building needed "hundreds of thousands of dollars of repair."
Loss of housing
Although West Marin is suffering from a housing shortage that was exacerbated by evicting Hamlet’s residents, "there simply wasn’t money then or now to put to restoring the buildings," he said.
Jensen observed that the razing of Hamlet is a sad conclusion to the history of a once-vibrant town.
"My feelings are that it’s too bad Hamlet wasn’t maintained in the first place," Jensen said. "Its history is rich: from the Miwok Indians, to the big schooners that used to come to shore, to the railway, to the oyster bed that developed. And now this."
Jensen called the town’s collapse a case of "benign neglect" by the Park Service.
"They do restore a lot of places," Jensen noted. "This wasn’t one of them. Different [Park Service] regimes have different ideas. In some ways, it’s a case of: if you don’t like what’s happening here, go look over there."
Historic buildings unprotected
Tomales resident Kathryn LeMieux, The Light’s political cartoonist who has drawn strips urging that Hamlet be preserved, this week said Tomales Bay’s east shore is "losing historic places for no reason."
Like Jensen, she commented, "It feels out here that sometimes it’s out of sight, out of mind. A part of West Marin history falls into [Tomales] Bay every winter."
Jensen said that the Marshall shore isn’t being totally ignored by the Park Service, but when it decides to make a move "it’s not always a good one."
"When the park and state get control over a bay, they’re going to want more power," Jensen said. "I don’t want to be controversial, but there are concerns."
As for the future of Hamlet, Park Service spokesman Dell’Osso said "several options" are under consideration, including widening a small pullout and adding picnic tables and an "exhibit panel" that would feature the history of the life on Tomales Bay.
"We’re not committing to anything now though," he said.
Tomales residents Jensen and LeMieux meanwhile said that if Hamlet is going to be laid bare, they’d like to see the site stay that way.
Preserving buildings in the National Seashore
While all this was occurring in Golden Gate National Recreation Property, at the Point Reyes National Seashore on the other side of Tomales Bay, the Park Service this week announced that work being done on Historic B Ranch should be completed before winter.
B Ranch, where Joe Sr. and Scotty Mendoza live, is not far from the Point Reyes Lighthouse. Buildings being restored there include a garage, two sheds, and a haybarn, all constructed in the 1920s.
"We’re reroofing there right now," said Dell’Osso. "We have several fund sources and get several hundred thousand dollars a year [in state and federal grants] for these restoration projects, not to mention the million dollars that went to restoring the lighthouse last year."
Dell’Osso said restoration projects, like the lighthouse or B Ranch, are "mapped out five years in advance" based on the severity of the buildings’ conditions.
"Let’s say a severe wind storm rips off the roof of one of the ranch buildings," Dell’Osso said. "Then that may move up the list."
Dell’Osso, who did not work in West Marin during Supt. Sansing’s administration, told The Light Tuesday he did not know whether Hamlet was ever on a list of projects to be restored.