Signs that popped up last week at Millerton Point, a popular dog walking spot in Marshall, that prohibit all dogs from the beach and off-leash dogs from a loop path sparked concern among residents who frequent the area with canines. But a supervising ranger with state parks, which owns the land, said this week that the rules outlined by the signs have been in place for many years. Laura Stokes, an Inverness Park resident who walks her Labrador at Millerton, said she has lived in West Marin since 2000 but has never known of the leash rule. Ms. Stokes said her dog “loves to run and splash on the beach…I’m feeling a lot of grief. It’s a social place where people take their dogs.” But the supervising ranger at Samuel P. Taylor State Park, Rosemary Blackburn, said that leash requirements and the beach ban have been around for over a decade, and that the same rules apply to all state parks. In fact, state parks generally ban dogs from trails, but they are allowed at Millerton because the path is considered a fire road, not a trail. According to her, there have been signs in the past; the decision to replace them last week was unrelated to work currently underway to make the site more accessible to people with disabilities, she added. Ms. Blackburn also disputed the notion that there were may be more rangers than usual at Millerton. In fact, Tomales Bay State Park—of which Millerton is part—currently has no rangers, so the two rangers who cover Samuel P. Taylor patrol the area. Yet some locals said that many years ago, there was a “informal agreement” to only loosely enforce dog rules at Millerton. Sue Baty, a Point Reyes Station resident, was involved in organizing concerned citizens 15 or so years ago, when the parks department was in the process of implementing new statewide rules. She told the Light that, between the group and the department, there was an “understanding that people would take [off-leash] dogs to Millerton…It was a discussion we had and an understanding we came to, and it worked very well.” She said the understanding included the proviso that “when a ranger comes along, you could look at the ranger as a sign…to put your dog on the leash.” Ms. Blackburn said there were “no handshakes on rules.”