The Bolinas-Fairfax Road: The History of One of Marin's Most Scenic Roads, Paperback

The Bolinas-Fairfax Road is unquestionably one of the most scenic roads anywhere. Its hundreds of serpentine turns wind from Fairfax in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, through redwood forests and grassy meadows along sparkling Alpine Lake, climbing a steep mountain ridge to sweeping views of the ocean, before plunging down to Bolinas on the Pacific coast. Beloved by photographers and those who make car commercials, it has been a popular drive for stagecoaches, cars, motorcycles, and bicycles for almost 140 years. It also provides access to scores of popular hiking trails and the heights of Mount Tamalpais. While the road is well known to locals, few know its history - when and why it was built, and by whom. They do not know that it did not originally go to Fairfax at all, but to San Rafael. Built in 1878 by Chinese laborers, it was the subject of anti-Asian vigilante threats. It had extensions to San Rafael and the summit of Mount Tamalpais. A whole series of stagecoach lines, driven by skilled and remarkable characters, provided a crucial transportation link across the county. Intimately tied to the history of Marin County and its water wars, the road was rerouted many times as dams and reservoirs were built. It was also the scene of runaway coaches, landslides, bridge collapses, forest fires, earthquakes, overturns, holdups, and encounters with bears and enraged stags. Compiled and meticulously researched by local historian Brian K. Crawford, with ample assistance by many librarians and historians, this book tells the remarkable story of this spectacular road. Illustrated with many maps and historical photographs, and directions on visiting the historic sites along the road.

Brian K. Crawford is a retired computer programmer living in Marin County, California, with his wife Linda. In addition to several collections of short fiction (Desert Moon, Tight Shorts, and Ten Stories Straight Up) and a series of memoirs about his hippie days (Peyote, Pirates, and Warana), he has written Toki, a historical novel about the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga. He has also reprinted a number of out-of-print books about Pacific exploration. He has written several books about the history of Marin County. His fiction has been published in the print magazines Bust-Out Stories and Paradox Historical Fiction, and the online journals Slow Trains, e-clips, Clean Sheets, Sedona's Attic, and Oysters and Chocolate, where his story The Heat won a Grand Prize. His short-short story Heart to Heart won Honorable Mention in the Whim's Place 2006 Flash Fiction contest, and The Find won Second Prize. His books are available on Amazon and Lulu. Born in Ohio in 1947, Crawford attended Ohio State and Antioch College but dropped out and went to Haight-Ashbury for the Summer of Love. After several years and many adventures on the road, he joined a group that bought a schooner in Nova Scotia and Crawford served as Second Officer, sailing it down the East Coast into a hurricane. Later he went to Tonga in the South Pacific, where he met his future wife Linda. He joined an Australian nuclear protest yacht bound to French Polynesia to anchor at ground zero. The mission was aborted, and Crawford helped sail the yacht through Fiji, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and down the coast of Australia, where he served as navigator in the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. He returned to the US in 1974, married Linda, and became a computer programmer in San Diego and later San Francisco, where they had their son Nathan in 1988. He enjoys sailing, hiking, kayaking, geocaching, genealogy, historical research, and early music. He is a volunteer with the San Anselmo Open Space Committee, the Friends of Faud Park, the Friends of Sorich Park, and is chairman of the Sorich Park Area Residents and the San Anselmo Trails Subcommittee.