Dillon Beach is a community situated along Dillon Creek that starts at an elevation of 430 feet (131 m) and flows generally west for 1.3 miles (2 km) to Bodega Bay near the mouth of Tomales Bay, about 43 miles (69 km) north-northwest of San Francisco and 7 miles (11 km) south-southeast of the community of Bodega Bay, California. The community is bordered to the north and east by active farmland and to the south by coastal dunes, and many nearby farms sit under Williamson Act contracts that promote farmland conservation. The underlying bedrock is mainly the Franciscan Complex, a mélange of slightly metamorphosed graywacke sandstone, greenstone and chert, overlain by fine-grained sandstones of the Merced Formation. Franciscan rock is heavily sheared and weathered, with low permeability and little cohesion, which makes slopes prone to landslides.

The Coast Miwok people lived in the area long before Europeans arrived, and the archaeological record suggests they gathered and dried shellfish along the shore. In October 1775, the Lima-born Spanish naval officer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra anchored his schooner Sonora in the lee of Tomales Point, and Europeans first charted the bay that year. In 1809, the Russian-American Company, which ran the fur trade in Alaska, set up a wharf and warehouses on the bay and named the port Rumyantsev. Ships carried sea otter pelts and produce from the company’s colony at Fort Ross, about 20 miles (32 km) north. The company sold Fort Ross to John Sutter in 1841 and withdrew. In 1844, Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted Jean Jacques Vioget a 26,759-acre (10,829-ha) Mexican land grant, Rancho Blucher. Named for the Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, it ran along the coast from Estero Americano to Estero de San Antonio, taking in all of present-day Dillon Beach.

After the Mexican-American War and the cession of Alta California to the United States, Stephen Smith filed a claim for Rancho Blucher in 1852, as the Land Act of 1851 required, and the grant was patented to him in 1858. In 1868, George and Mathilda Dillon arrived, and in 1888 they built an 11-room hotel, restaurant and general store that became the core of the resort. In 1903, Dillon sold the property to John Keegan on condition that the beach always be called Dillon Beach. Keegan built vacation cottages and ran a stagecoach to Tomales, where the North Pacific Coast Railroad made a stop. The California Eucalyptus Plantation Company bought the holdings in 1911. The Lawson family leased and later bought parts of the property, and by 1942 the operation was firmly in its hands. From 1933 until the 1980s, the College of the Pacific, now the University of the Pacific, ran the Pacific Marine Station between Portola Beach and Lawsons Landing. The resort was purchased by Mike Goebel in 2018 and is marketed as the only private beach in California, though state law keeps the sand below the high-tide line public. The California Coastal Commission approved a permit for the resort’s redevelopment in 2021, and it has since reviewed complaints about new tiny-home RVs. The nearshore and offshore waters lie within the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Read more here and here. Explore more of Dillon Beach and Bodega Bay here: