Point Reyes Station is a community situated on the San Andreas Rift Zone at the head of Tomales Bay near the tidal estuary of Lagunitas Creek, about 29 miles (47 km) northwest of San Francisco and 3.5 miles (6 km) southeast of Inverness, California. Point Reyes Station was originally called Olema Station when it was a stop on the North Pacific Coast Railroad that connected Cazadero near the Russian River with the Sausalito ferries. The name was later changed when a post office was established for the Point Reyes Peninsula. Lagunitas Creek starts at an elevation of roughly 2,600 feet (793 m) on the northern slopes of Mount Tamalpais on the Marin Peninsula in the Pacific Coast Ranges and flows generally northwest for 24 miles (39 km) to Tomales Bay, draining a watershed of 68,458 acres (27,704 ha). Most of the major tributaries to Lagunitas Creek are dammed creating the Kent, Alpine, Bon Tempe, Lagunitas, and Nicasio reservoirs. The watershed is formed by sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Franciscan Complex. The Olema Creek valley represents the western portion of the watershed and is formed by the San Andreas Fault, the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate that extends roughly 750 miles (1,200 km).
The Coast Miwok inhabited much of present-day Marin County for thousands of years as small bands of hunter-gatherers without a centralized political authority subsisting on staple foods such as acorns and game animals. They would move to the coast seasonally to fish for salmon and collect shellfish and seaweed. In 1770, the Coast Miwok population was estimated by early Spanish settlers to be 1,500 to 2,000 but this declined precipitously when Europeans arrived and introduced diseases. In 1776, the Coast Miwok and Ohlone people began joining Mission San Francisco de Asis. In 1817, 850 Coast Miwok had been converted and most were brought north to build Mission San Rafael on the Marin Peninsula. In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence freed the surviving Coast Miwoks from the control of the Franciscan missionaries. At the same time, the Mission lands were secularized and given as land grants to prominent Californios. In 1835, 80,000 acres (32,375 ha) of land surrounding Tomales Bay was granted to the Coast Miwok by Mexican Governor José Figueroa but never conveyed. In 1844, a land grant of 56,621 acres (22,914 ha) called Rancho Nicasio was given by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Pablo de la Guerra and Juan B.R. Cooper. After Alta California was ceded to the United States in 1848, de la Guerra sold his 30,848 acres to Henry W. Halleck. In 1850, Cooper sold his 16,293 acres to Benjamin R. Buckelew. By 1870, the land was patented to Halleck, Buckelew, James Black, William Reynolds, and Daniel Frink. Immigrants from Ireland, southern Switzerland, Denmark, and the Portuguese Azores became the main labor force on the ranches and made Marin County the leading dairy producer in California.
Lagunitas Creek watershed supports steelhead trout and the largest remaining spawning habitat for wild coho salmon in Central California. However, these coho are listed as endangered at both the state and federal levels due to a declining population from historical estimates of 50,000–125,000 spawning adults to only 67 returning adults in 2013. Human-caused factors for this decline include habitat alterations such as water diversions, road building, timber harvest, urbanization, flood control structures and practices, and climate change. In the 20th and 21st centuries, a growing human population has also increased the water demand. Increased demand for water for the growing population and agricultural needs, along with infrastructure like roads along stream corridors, has in certain areas of the watershed led to a simplification of stream habitat, channel incision, and an overall degradation of the habitat available to salmonids. Nicasio Creek historically supported half of the coho spawning populations in the Lagunitas Creek watershed, but in 1960, the construction of Seeger Dam blocked about 50 percent of the spawning habitat in the watershed. Most spawning in the Lagunitas Creek watershed now takes place in San Geronimo Creek, an unregulated tributary, where roughly 40 percent of the watershed salmon spawn each year. In 2017, 12 pink salmon and 6 chum salmon appeared for the first time in Lagunitas Creek. Pink salmon rarely spawn in coastal streams south of tributaries to Puget Sound, and the known southern limit of spawning chum salmon is Tillamook Bay, Oregon. Read more here and here. Explore more of Point Reyes Station and Tomales Bay here:
