A History of Transportation, Land Use and Economic Development in Coastal marin County 1800-1900
Graduation Date
Spring 1969
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
The opening of the 19th Century found the United States in possession of the Eastern third of the continent, consisting of the original thirteen states plus western territories reaching to the Mississippi. Boundaries were of an uncertain nature, in that the exact course of that mighty stream and its headwaters were unknown even to map-makers. Although there was a strong tradition of seafaring in the New England states, the new country as a whole was mainly agricultural in nature. West of the Mississippi a vast wilderness stretched to the Pacific Ocean, where a thin strip of Spanish colonization ran along the coast from Mexico to San Francisco Bay. Only a few explorers and trappers knew what lay to the North, an area vaguely claimed by Spain, Russia and Britain alike.
Within the span of 100 years this simple agrarian economy of some 4,000,000 souls had defined its continental borders and been transformed into a modern industrial giant with a population of 144 million people, complex and diversified in geography and economy. The story of this transformation includes the most exciting chapters in American history — the exploits of the early sea captains searching the unknown Pacific in pursuit of trade 0.00 fur territories; the adventures of the mountain men and trappers as they explored the plains and mountains in the 1820’s and early 1830’s; the inexorable tide of the pioneers pushing back the Indians in the expansionist ISUO's and 1850’s; the exploitation of natural resources, the triumph of industrialism following the Civil war and the heyday of the speculators and the railroads in the 1860’s and 1870’s; the rise of a prosperous suburban middle- class in the 1880’s and 1890 's — in short, an economic and social transformation, breathtaking in its scope and rapidity.
Often a better understanding of such an enormous historical development can be reached through examining one section of it on a small scale. The study of local history offers such a technique. To the extent that growth of a city or a county parallels that of the nation as a whole, problems and events within a small community can shed tight on national and even international trends. For this reason, the history of Marin County, although a placid and uneventful backwater in comparison to its glittering neighbor, San Francisco, offers substantial implications. Between the years 1800 and 1900, Marin’s socioeconomic development followed the same pattern of transformation as that of the nation. The elementary hunting and trading system of the Indian and early fur trappers gave way to an agricultural era. followed by a miniature ship- building and lumbering boom, which, in turn, with the advent of the steamships and railroads, became an era of residential and recreational development for the prosperous citizens of the 1890's. These various Phases are particularly obvious in the development of the Morin sea-coast communities which were the centers of ail trade commercial activity. Seen in this framework of national trends, their isolated and otherwise meaningless histories take on a coherence and a considerable significance.