*** Source: Thompson, Robert A., Historical and descriptive sketch of Sonoma County, California. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877, 122 pgs. Notice: This data is donated to the Public Domain by TAG, 2004, and may be copied freely by anyone to anywhere. *** ---page 43--- San Quentin terminus is used principally for the passenger business. This latter terminus is connected with San Francisco, a distance of about nine miles, by two elegant ferry boats, built in New York exclusively for this line, and for travel between the city of San Francisco and San Rafael. The road is a narrow-gauge, being three feet between the rails; leaving San Rafael, the road runs through Marin county, passing Ross valley, by Fairfax and Pacheco, to the summit, known as White Hill, at the head of Ross valley. The grade in this ascent is one hundred and twenty-one feet to the mile, and so doubles back upon itself that in one instance the tracks are not one hun- dred yards apart after traversing a distance of three-fourths of a mile. At the summit the road passes through a tunnel thirteen hundred feet long, and descends into the valley of San Geromino creek to Nicasio, and from there to Tomales. The route to this point is through a splendid dairy country, and, for all those rare beauties of scenery peculiar to California, it can nowhere be surpassed. For a year and a half the northern terminus of the road was at Tomales, fifty-four miles from Saucelito. The entrance to Sonoma count was barred, as it were, by a wall of solid rock, through which it was necessary to cut a tunnel seventeen hundred feet in length. The men who formed this company were not to be deterred by obstacles even as formidable as this rocky barrier; they pierced it, and soon the hills which enclosed the fertile valleys of south- western Sonoma echoed the steam-whistle of the approaching locomotive. The road was finished to its destined terminus on Russian river in the winter of 1876-7. Just before reaching Valley Ford (we refer the reader to the map) the road crosses the Estero Americano, and enters Sonoma county, passing Valley Ford, a pretty village: but just why its church should have been built across the line in Marin county, is beyond our ken. Steaming north, we pass Bodega Corners depot, and next Freestone, of which a description appears elsewhere. Just beyond Freestone the road enters the redwood timber belt, ascends Salmon creek by a steep grade to Howard’s station; crossing there the summit of the divide between the waters which fall, on the south, into Bodega bay, and on the north into Russian river. Just before reaching Howard’s the road passes over one of the highest bridges west of the Mississippi river. The bridge is one hundred and thirty-seven feet high. At Howard’s we have fairly entered the redwood timber fields, and begin to realize the ultimate aims of the projectors of this enterprise, and the business it is destined to develop. Up to the fall of 1876 there were only three small saw-mills on or near the line of the road, and the great expense of hauling made them available only for the local trade. It has been but nine months since the road was completed, and there are now on the line of the road six large saw-mills, sending to mar- ket daily one hundred and seventy-five thousand feet of lumber, besides great quantities of shingles, lathes, pickets, cord-wood, tan-bark and charcoal. Streeten’s mill is owned by Latham & Streeten; has a capacity of fifteen thousand feet per day; has about one thousand acres of land; employs forty men. The Russian River Land and Lumber Company is owned by Governor Milton S. Latham, the largest owner of timber-land in this section, having ten thousand acres in one body. From Streeten’s mill to Duncan’s, with the *** end ***