bob_hough_greenbrae_vista
A dairy operated on the hills of Greenbrae for about 80 years before its owner sold it to developer Niels Shultz, who preserved many native trees and avoid the monotonous feel of many developments.. Many mourned the loss of the beautiful ranch and the sale of it and other ranches in eastern Marin led to the movement to save West Marin agriculture. Courtesy of Bob Hough/Kentfield-Greenbrae Historical Society.

In the 1860s the unincorporated town of Kentfield, which sits in the lower Ross Valley, was affectionately called Tarantulaville by locals. The name comes from men who drank “tarantula juice,” a former slang term for subpar whiskey. According to historian Dewey Livingston, it was a rag-tag settlement populated by “hardworking, hard drinking gang[s] of men” who felled trees and loaded them onto schooners at the landing on Corte Madera Creek. 

Back then, the area—where now…