West Marin’s historical societies are stewarded by a handful of residents from Stinson Beach to Tomales, and more recently, the San Geronimo Valley. But the mostly volunteer historians, curators, archivists and writers are aging, and they’re beginning to think about their succession plans. A new project conjured up by Lagunitas resident Dave Cort is bringing the region’s historical societies together to problem solve how to engage the younger generation.
“It’s so important that we get younger people in West Marin to take an interest and sustain these historical societies,” Mr. Cort said. “Besides the San Geronimo Valley Historical Society, most of these societies are made up of volunteers in their late 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. We have these very rich historical societies but there isn’t a lot of crossover between them.”
In the last several years, the Tomales Regional History Center, the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History, the Bolinas Museum, the Nicasio Historical Society, the Stinson Beach Historical Society and the San Geronimo Valley Historical Society have pushed to bring on new volunteers and staff, schedule guest lectures, gather donations and convert analog archives to digital.
The Tomales center has led a new programming effort and brought in Lynn Downey, an author and historian for Levi Strauss & Co., as a consulting archivist and member of the board. The center revamped its lecture series, featuring one lecture on Christo’s famous “Running Fence” installation, and is posting them online.
The San Geronimo Valley Historical Society, founded in 2019, is the youngest of the group. Driven by 29-year-old Woodacre native Owen Clapp, the organization has made strides in becoming a trusted source of local history and is working to digitize its archive.
Dewey Livingston, West Marin’s most prolific historian, volunteers for the Jack Mason Museum in Inverness and works as a maps archivist for the Marin County Free Library. He has written a weekly history column for the Point Reyes Light for decades, but began sharing it with Mr. Clapp in 2019. The publishers of the Light are digitizing their own archives and have partnered with the Jack Mason Museum to document local Latino history with help from a team of young interviewers.
Despite the surge of interest in preserving local history, an existential threat looms—assigning successors. And the baby boomers say that finding young, enthusiastic people who want to volunteer is challenging. “I don’t know if it’s that people volunteer less or that life is more complicated and younger people don’t have the desire or time,” said Suzanne Lang, an editor at the Tomales Regional History Center.
Mr. Clapp understands the difficulty. “It’s almost all volunteer-based and there aren’t a lot of young people who can live or find a place to live in Marin,” he said. “I work full time at the Marin Office of Education and it’s hard to balance a job with playing music and volunteering at the historical society. West Marin’s huge and there are so many stories specific to these communities we all serve, so it’s important we try to keep all these organizations going.”
Before the Tomales museum opened in 1978, West Marin’s historical archives leaned heavily on the county libraries, local antiquarians and an Inverness resident named Jack Mason—a Cal graduate and one-time newspaper editor for the Oakland Tribune. When Mr. Mason retired to Inverness in the 1960s, he began chronicling the stories he heard around town. He eventually published eight books and a quarterly journal, the Point Reyes Historian. But just as West Marin’s historical archive was starting to flourish, Mr. Mason was diagnosed with cancer.
It just so happened that a 30-year-old Mr. Livingston had newly moved to Inverness and was looking for advice about getting into history and journalism. He decided to visit Mr. Mason. On his way, he felt excited but also nervous. He had great respect for Mr. Mason’s work but had heard rumors that the 80-year-old could be a curmudgeon. “I didn’t know what to expect, but he was just as nice as can be and very welcoming,” Mr. Livingston said. “He had the idea that the library should move into his home because it was in this teeny building which is now Dixon Marine.”
After Mr. Mason died, his house was bequeathed to the Inverness Foundation to serve as a museum and library branch. The Jack Mason Museum now has a membership of roughly 250 and a healthy rotation of exhibits, along with an impressive archive. But at 70 years old, Mr. Livingston is starting to feel the need for younger people to step in.
“I’m getting a little worried about the future and having young people be able to get involved,” he said. “I was lucky because when I was 30, it was easier to live out here. Rent was cheap, I had a part-time job and was raising three kids. Now that’s not possible.”
Mr. Livingston’s concerns are not unique among West Marin’s curators and historians. When Mr. Cort retired from the role of executive director at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center last summer, he felt grateful to hand the torch to a young like-minded leader. He began cooking up a collaborative of local historical societies. Such a partnership could provide rich crossover for West Marin’s stories and garner interest from younger people across the region.
Mr. Cort brought the idea to the county and was awarded a $5,000 grant or the initiative. Since the Bolinas Museum, which was founded in 1983, was one of the older historical societies in West Marin and the only one with several paid staffers, it is serving as the fiscal sponsor. Over the next nine months, the historical societies will meet at each site to discuss how they can collaborate and attract interest from younger residents.