Clearing the way for an upcoming habitat restoration project along Lagunitas Creek, the National Park Service is set to remove 15 vacant homes and accessory structures that formed the historic neighborhoods of Tocaloma and Jewell. With the buildings out of the way, the nonprofit Salmon Protection and Watershed Network plans to raze the foundations and other concrete infrastructure to return the mile-long stretch to native habitat.
The unoccupied homes are the second set slated for demolition starting later this year by the park service, which is poised to remove 10 homes at Duck Cove on Tomales Bay. By historian Dewey Livingston’s count, state and federal parks agencies have eliminated 100 housing units in West Marin since the 1960s.
Homes sprung up in Tocaloma and Jewell in the 1930s and initially served as vacation getaways where Bay Area families swam in the creek and hosted summer barbeques. In the mid-1970s, the park service purchased the land and issued temporary leases to homeowners, most of which expired around 2000 and prompted the exodus of Tocaloma and Jewell residents.
In the park’s view, none of the homes ever housed permanent residents, save for some park employees and one local schoolteacher. But that teacher, Nancy Wolf, told the Light that at least six families—including her own from 1983 to 2005—lived full-time in the homes, where local realtors, handymen and 4-H Club leaders raised their children in what Ms. Wolf called an “idyllic” existence.
“It was a vibrant community,” said Ms. Wolf, who works as the interim principal at Bodega Bay Elementary School. “We were all stewards of the property, and we all cared very deeply for the wildlife and the community there.”
Even so, the park has claimed poor septic systems and instances of severe flooding in the area made the Tocaloma and Jewell homes untenable for prospective residents, even if leases had not expired. “The original intent was for all the homes to be returned to natural habitat,” said John Dell’Osso, a spokesman for the park. “All the homeowners at the time knew that.”
According to research conducted by Sonoma State University student Barbara Polansky in 1997, the homes represented a small but important support for West Marin’s housing stock. She submitted her research to the National Register of Historical Places in a proposal to preserve one Tocaloma home for its historical significance, which was denied.
“With the housing situation as it is in Marin County and West Marin specifically, extremely expensive and hard to come by, it would be a positive step for the families currently living in these homes to be able to continue doing so,” Ms. Polansky wrote in 1997. “They do in fact represent an important theme in West Marin’s local history.”
First inhabited by Coastal Miwok, Tocaloma and Jewell remained unsettled for centuries before a paper mill was built upstream nearby in 1856. Put on the map as a stop for trains on the North Pacific Coast Railroad after its completion in 1875, Jewell takes its name from Omar Jewell, who established a dairy ranch on the creek’s banks. Across the way lay Cheda Ranch, which was divided up and sold as home sites in what became known as Tocaloma after Sir Francis Drake Boulevard replaced the railroad in 1930.
Now on the cusp of demolition, a quarter-mile stretch of Jewell will play host to SPAWN’s first-ever “bioblitz” on Saturday, where volunteers will survey the area’s present biodiversity for comparison over the next several years after native vegetation has rebounded. Participants will document existing plants and insects on an iPhone app called iNaturalist, which geo-tags photos and exports them to scientists who can identify species within 24 hours.
“We’re hoping to repeat the process a few times through our restoration of the floodplain,” said Catie Clune, an education specialist for SPAWN’s parent group, the Turtle Island Restoration Network. “Hopefully, we see some changes over time.” Ms. Clune added that Turtle Island’s headquarters lie within the restoration area and will eventually be moved.
To pay for the restoration project’s design plans and permits, Turtle Island received nearly $500,000 this month from the Coastal Conservancy out of state Prop. 1 funds, which authorized $7.12 in bonds to finance water infrastructure improvements and restoration work and was passed by 67 percent of voters in 2014.
Turtle Island will pitch in about $30,000 for staff time and benefits, while the park will spend over $560,000 to remove 15 homes, 10 garages, nine sheds and 1,150 feet of chain link fencing.
Along with clearing out berms and installing woody debris structures to facilitate creek flow, SPAWN plans to return 1,500 native plants, including sage, monkey flower, coyote brush, ferns, twin berries and willows, to the site. The nonprofit also intends to plant more redwoods to shore up bank stability as part of its 10,000 Redwoods Project, which aims to reforest the Lagunitas Creek watershed with redwoods and other creek-friendly tree species.
At least for Mr. Livingston, SPAWN’s focus on redwood propagation may be misplaced. He reasons that ranchers and landowners in the past did not log redwoods in the large numbers that SPAWN suspects they did, as evidenced by the fact that the old paper mill used rags instead of wood pulp to make paper.
“I’m not confident that it’s historically and environmentally correct to plant redwoods where they might not have been,” said Mr. Livingston, who has pushed SPAWN to conduct further research on the valley’s trees. “There were definitely redwoods along Lagunitas Creek, but not necessarily the amount they’re talking about.”
Aside from trees, a key goal of the project will be to preserve the stretch of creek for endangered coho salmon, whose population over the last 60 years has plummeted from around 6,000 down to about 400 female spawning fish—a more-than 90-percent drop. SPAWN is currently monitoring juvenile salmon runs in the creek and expects to have data on population counts within the next few weeks.