In 1898, Edna Cotrel pooled her resources with nine other women to nab the last remaining lot on Inverness’s bluff overlooking Tomales Bay. Two were Edna’s sisters, Amy and Lucy, and most were schoolteachers from San Francisco. Over the course of several summers, they labored alongside one another to build a modest four-room cottage. They named it “Ululani” after the 18th-century Hawaiian chiefess and poet who must have inspired one of the women after she spent time on a Hawaiian island.
There are reminders in and around Inverness of these women, starting with the naming of Teachers Beach—a sandy area on Tomales Bay situated between Chicken Ranch and Shell Beaches. Teachers Beach was a popular Inverness summer picnic and swimming area until the mid-1950s, when it was absorbed into a private neighborhood of the new Seahaven subdivision and effectively closed to the public.
The origin of its name was subject to speculation until Inverness veteran Elizabeth Dempster Stahr wrote to historian Jack Mason in 1976, setting forth her authoritative understanding of how Teachers Beach had acquired its name. She pointed to the women who built Ululani.
“They used to row there frequently and sit on the sand with lunch and cards,” she wrote. One of those teachers was Edna, Mrs. Dempster-Stahr’s great-aunt. When I was a child, she wrote, “My aunt used to park on that road and we would walk down through that moss-covered forest and have a most private and delightful day swimming and picnicking.”
The teachers’ original four-room cottage on Edgement Way was expanded as finances permitted. In the early years, a tent with an outdoor cold-water shower stood down the hill from the cottage. The teachers later replaced the tent with what they called a “bungalette.” Initially, they furnished it by rummaging through their parents’ attics for hand-me-downs. Later, they added furnishings purchased on their travels. Edna spent a year on the island of Kauai, teaching in a school at the Fayé Sugar Plantation. She returned with tapa cloths that adorned the living room walls.
To reach Inverness at the turn of the 20th century, the teachers traveled by ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito, then rode the North Pacific Coast Railroad train to Point Reyes Station. Prior to departing San Francisco, they communicated instructions to Brock Schreiber, the operator of Inverness’s boathouse, to leave a rowboat waiting for them at Point Reyes Station.
After arriving in Point Reyes, they would take the rowboat and make their way down Tomales Bay to the Schreiber boathouse. The teachers also got around on the water during their extended summer stays, rowing to Point Reyes for groceries and complaining when rough waters caused the eggs they had purchased to break. They rowed right up to the beach that was eventually named after them.
Occasionally, the women threw parties and invited young men, who would stay in one of Inverness’s lodges. One of these young guests was James Rolph, Jr., later a mayor of San Francisco from 1912 to 1931 and governor of California from 1931 to 1934. The Highland Lodge guest book maintained by the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History records Mr. Rolph registering in September 1908. He was accompanied by Mary Rolph, his elderly aunt, and Mary Hind, the mother of one of the original 10 women.
Today, the Ululani cottage is owned by the extended Cotrel family. In 1961, Amy Cotrel’s son, Burgess Dempster, and his wife, Nell, purchased the cottage from the last surviving owners, Edna Cotrel and Luise Krause. The house is owned by Amy’s great-grandsons, Walter and Frederick Stahr.
Courtney Linn is an executive with a Sacramento-based credit union and lives part-time in Inverness. He thanks historian Daniella Thompson for her assistance, and the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History for making available the letter that Elizabeth Dempster Stahr wrote about the schoolteachers and the Ululani.