Marshall sits on the east shore of Tomales Bay, about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Bodega Bay and 6 miles (9.7 km) south of Tomales, California. The bay formed along a submerged stretch of the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates meet, which accounts for its long, linear, narrow shape. Franciscan Complex rock, prone to landslides, underlies the hills along the eastern shore, while the Point Reyes Peninsula rises to the west. Sediment from creeks has deposited and aggraded the shoreline seaward since the 1800s, mostly before 1918, and a sandbar at the mouth of the bay has long endangered small boats. The town takes its name from the four Marshall brothers, who began a dairy industry there in the 1850s. In the 1870s, Marshall became a stop on the North Pacific Coast Railroad, which linked Cazadero to a ferry at Sausalito on San Francisco Bay. Dairy farming persists in the area, but shellfish and tourism now drive the local economy.

Irish immigrants Alexander, James, Hugh and Samuel Marshall settled a ranch of 1,125 acres (455 ha) on the east shore of Tomales Bay in the early 1850s. The Coast Miwok had lived along the bay for millennia, and a village called Echa-kolum once stood just south of present-day Marshall. The brothers drove a herd of beef cattle from Kentucky to the bay in 1853 and 1854, then built a wharf and warehouse on the shore that became a shipping point for local ranchers and farmers. By the early 1870s, the settlement included a store, hotel and post office. Dairy ranching soon replaced beef as the area’s main enterprise, and the family also raised horses and grew potatoes and wheat. Point Reyes landowners and railroad investors, including James McMillan Shafter and Charles S. Howard, lobbied the railroad to route the tracks along Tomales Bay. The Marshall brothers and James Miller, who owned property along the bay’s eastern shore, offered a $10,000 subsidy to encourage the train to stop at their settlements.

In 1907, Eli Gordon’s Pacific Coast Oyster Company planted 450 acres (182 ha) of eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) at a railroad stop called Bivalve, opened exclusively for the company on the bay’s southeastern shore. The first train carried 3,000 sacks of potatoes from the area, and the line’s freight included clams and oysters from Marshall and Bivalve, herring from Hamlet, and hay, grain and milk from across the area bound for merchants, wholesalers and consumers in San Francisco. The North Pacific Coast Railroad was absorbed into the Northwestern Pacific in 1907, and the narrow-gauge line ceased operating in 1930. Oyster farming remains the bay’s major industry. Tomales Bay Oyster Company, founded in 1909, is California’s oldest continuously operating shellfish farm. Hog Island Oyster Company, started in 1983, is the other leading producer. Both sell oysters at retail in Marshall and maintain picnic grounds on the east shore where visitors shuck their own. Straus Family Creamery operates a dairy nearby, and the town’s population of about 400 relies on visitors drawn to its seafood and to the old railroad route, which cyclists can still follow. Read more here and here. Explore more of Marshall and Tomales Bay here: