Tomales Bluff is a headland forming the northern tip of Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore National Seashore, about 45 miles (72 km) northwest of San Francisco and 7 miles (11 km) south-southeast of Bodega Bay, California. Tomales Point and the Point Reyes Peninsula are geologically separated from the mainland by the San Andreas Fault, which forms Tomales Bay. The San Andreas is a continental transform fault extending roughly from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north—a distance of about 810 miles (1,304 km). It marks the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate to the west and the North American Plate to the east. Its right-lateral strike-slip motion means the Pacific Plate is moving north relative to the North American Plate, with a slip rate of 0.79 to 1.38 inches (20–35 mm) per year. The Point Reyes Peninsula is part of the Salinian Block and features a granitic core unlike the terrain east of Tomales Bay. The granite was once contiguous with the Tehachapi Mountains, now located 350 miles (563 km) to the south. The 1906 earthquake caused the peninsula to shift north by 21 feet (6.4 m). Geologically, the area comprises three major formations: the Salinian Cretaceous granitic basement, overlying Pliocene sedimentary rocks, and late Pleistocene marine terrace deposits in the southern region. Tomales Point is named for the indigenous Tamal people. The name appears in the baptismal records of Mission San Francisco de Asís as early as 1801 and derives from the Coast Miwok word ‘tamal,’ meaning ‘west’ or ‘west coast.’ The place name Tamales first surfaced in 1819 when Padre Juan Amoros of Mission San Rafael baptized about 100 indigenous people from the region known as the Tamales—a territory that includes present-day Tomales Bay, Bodega Bay, and several smaller embayments opening to the ocean. The name appears in both forms—Tamales and Tomales—as in Mount Tamalpais and in the titles of three Mexican land grants.

Point Reyes area was home to the Tamal Coast Miwok for thousands of years. They subsisted as seasonal hunters and gatherers, eating fish, clams, mussels, crab, deer, elk, bear, mud hen, geese and other small game caught with spears and bows. They also collected plants for immediate use and storage. Miwok lands remained unknown to Europeans until 1579, when Captain Francis Drake sighted and mapped the fog‐shrouded headlands from the Golden Hind. Laden with gold and treasures—including porcelain from Spanish galleons plying the route between Manila and Acapulco—the ship anchored near a Miwok village by Point Reyes or Tomales Bay. The chaplain noted the constant fog, the indigenous people, the landscape and the wildlife. Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I, naming it New Albion before continuing his circumnavigation. In the late 1500s, Spanish galleons voyaged between New Spain and the Philippines. To cross the North Pacific, they sailed north to catch prevailing westerly winds along the coast north of present‐day Cape Mendocino, then turned south. In 1595, Captain Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho, commanding the San Agustin, anchored in the calm waters of today’s Drakes Bay on Point Reyes’s southern shore. The Miwok greeted him much as they had Drake 16 years earlier. However, a severe storm forced the ship to drag anchor, drift ashore and break up. Survivors boarded a small launch salvaged from the San Agustin and sailed south on December 8, reaching Puerto de Vallarta on January 17, 1596. As Spain expanded into Alta California, Point Reyes appeared on maps in 1603 when Sebastián Vizcaíno sighted the headlands on the feast day of the three wise men, naming it la Punta de los Reyes (Point of the Kings). The Miwok remained until the late 18th century, when Mission San Rafael forced them to relocate. At the mission, Franciscan padres compelled the Miwok to convert and work.

After the Mexican War of Independence ended in 1821, Spanish mission lands were divided into private grants under the 1833 secularization act; the Point Reyes Peninsula was split into two. In 1836, Governor Nicolás Gutiérrez granted 8,878 acres (3,593 ha) called Rancho Punta de los Reyes to James Richard Berry; in 1838, Governor Juan B. Alvarado re-granted it to Joseph Snook. The grant extended along the west side of Tomales Bay. In 1839, Snook sold the rancho to Antonio Maria Osio, who in 1843 received an additional 48,189 acres (19,501 ha) called Rancho Punta de los Reyes Sobrante from Governor Manuel Micheltorena—its name meaning ‘leftover of Point Reyes Ranch’—comprising much of today’s Point Reyes National Seashore. During the Mexican-American War in 1846, Osio fled to Honolulu, returning in 1850 to sell Rancho Punta de los Reyes Sobrante to Andrew Randall, who also acquired Rancho Punta de los Reyes and Rancho Aguas Frias. Randall was fatally shot in a San Francisco hotel in 1856; his properties then passed to the Shafter brothers, Oscar and James, and their son-in-law Charles Webb Howard. They established large dairies; within a decade, 3,500 cows on 17 dairies produced over 700,000 pounds (317,515 kg) of butter for San Francisco. In 1858, the Shafters sold 2,200 acres (890 ha) at Tomales Point to Solomon Pierce. Pierce Point Ranch became the largest of four independent ranches on the peninsula in the late 1800s, renowned for its butter. Leased from the 1880s until the mid-1930s, it was then sold to the McClure family, who operated it until about 1945, ending 90 years of dairy production. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy authorized acquiring 53,000 acres (21,448 ha) for Point Reyes National Seashore, now 71,028 acres (28,744 ha). In 1973, Pierce Point Ranch ceased operations; three years later, Congress created a wilderness area from its lands to reintroduce tule elk on Tomales Point. Efforts are now underway to restore the northern coastal prairie. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tomales Point and Point Reyes here: