Mill Valley Lodge History

California and Marin County

The Coast Miwok Indians greeted Francis Drake and the crew of the Golden Hinde shortly after they arrived in Marin in 1579.

The Coast Miwok Indians were hunters and gatherers whose ancestors had occupied the area for thousands of years. About 600 village sites have been identified in the area.

In 1595 Sebastian Cermeno lost his ship, the San Agustin, while exploring the Marin Coast. The Spanish explorer Viscaino landed about twenty years after Drake in what is now called Drake's Bay. However the first Spanish settlement in Marin was not established until 1817 when Mission San Rafael Archangel was founded partly is response to the Russian built Fort Ross in what is now Sonoma County. Chief Marin, who was named by the Spaniards, led a band of resisters against the Spaniards, and was formidable enough that the county was name in his honor.

In 1821 control of California passed from Spain to Mexico, and in the early 1830s secularization of mission properties was decreed.

During the next decade, Marin was divided into great ranchos. A grantee was required to become a Mexican citizen and baptized Catholic; thereafter his first name was Spanish and he was known as a "don." Juan Reed, Sausalito's first known English-speaking resident, was granted the Rancho Corte Madera del Presidio. Adjacent land was granted to Captain Guillermo Antonio Richardson, an Englishman and the first port captain of San Francisco. Timoteo Murphy was given an immense grant that included San Rafael, where he managed the mission properties.

The United States' occupation of California began in 1846, ending the "Days of the Dons."

U.S. Army officer John Charles Fremont," christened the entrance to San Francisco Bay by the name we know it today. "I gave the name Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate," he wrote, "for the same reason that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras or Golden Horn." The time was just before the Gold Rush. It was Fremont who surreptitiously organized the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, which led to California’s separation from Mexico and to statehood.

On July 7, 1846, Masonic Brother, Commodore John D. Sloat, Commander-in-chief of the United States naval forces in the Pacific Ocean, came ashore at the Presidio of Monterey and raised the flag of the United States over California.

Freemason James W. Marshall discovered Gold at Sutter's Mill California in 1848, sparking the gold rush of 1849 that brought enough people to the territory for its admission as a State. The little town of Yerba Buena took the name of its Bay and became San Francisco.

In September of 1850, the Republic of California became a State in the United States of America and Marin one of its original counties. Five months earlier, on April 19, 1850, the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons of the State of California was formed. Jonathan D. Stevenson of San Francisco became the first Grand Master and had a full corps of officers.

As settlement of California accelerated, the huge cattle-raising ranchos gradually gave way to smaller ranches, many of which still flourish today.

In 1850, the two largest fraternal orders, the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows embarked on a unique cooperative project to benefit the State of California. The two fraternal orders created the first hospital in the new State of California following the great flood of the winter of1849-1850. It was called the Odd Fellows and Masons Hospital, and admitted and cared for any patient regardless of affiliation, making no distinction between members and non-members. All funds for operating the hospital were to be contributed only by the members of the two fraternal organizations.

The first Masonic Corner Stone ceremony in California was held in September 1848, before the state's admission into the Union, to dedicate the county courthouse of Sacramento County, which served as the capital until Governor John G. Downey, a Freemason, commissioned the present capital building. On May 15 1861, the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of California laid the corner stone for the new State Capitol building at Sacramento.

In 1868, the California Legislature passed an act establishing the University of California, whose first campus was at Berkeley. Interestingly, UC Berkeley as it came to be known was the outgrowth of the Oakland Academy that was founded by a Freemason, Henry Durant, in June, 1853.

Fraternalism was introduced to Marin County by Freemasons acting under dispensation in February 1868 and formally instituted in November 1868 followed by a Grand Ball - the first of the kind in the county. Among the charter members becoming the Lodge's first officers were William N. Anderson, Worshipful Master; Oliver Irwin, Senior Warden; and William L. Barnard, Junior Warden.

In 1878, Bro. Lester Allen Pelton invented the Pelton Water Wheel at Comptonville, CA.

Trains, steamships and ferries were introduced to Marin county in the 1880's and 90s. One rail line even ascended Mt. Tamalpais. The idea for the Mt. Tamalpais and Muir Woods Railroad was conceived by a Mill Valley Masonic Lodge Past Master, Bro. Louis Janes; chief engineer on the line was Mill Valley Masonic Brother W.J. (Bill) Thomas. Ferry slips were built at Sausalito and Tiburon: The preponderance of ferrymen were entitled to wear the square and compass, and a "Ferry Boat Coaching Club" was formed on the boats were many Masonic candidates and officers learned their work while traveling to and from work - the ferrymen reserved the room close to the paddle box on board the ferries for this purpose since the noise of the paddles drowned out the voices of the groups that met there. Transportation meant farmers could supply San Francisco with food. It also meant more people could enjoy Marin County.

Leland Stanford University opened in 1891. It may be noted that Sen. Leland Stanford, was himself a Freemason.

Movies came to Marin County in 1903 when an Edison Kinetescope Parlor opened on Fourth Street in San Rafael. Among the earliest moving pictures were those by Eadweard Muybridge of the ride down Mount Tamalpais on Bro. Louis L. Janes' Muir Woods and Mt. Tamalpais Railroad that had been filmed in 1898. (See, Movie Studios & Movie Theatres in Marin: A History Since 1898, Lionel Ashcroft (Marin Historical Society, 1998)

In 1904, the St. Francis Hotel, designed by Masonic Brothers Danforth Bliss and William Baker Faville both of California Lodge No. 1 and partners in the architectural firm of Bliss & Faville, was constructed. Bros. Bliss and Faville were commissioned to enlarge the St. Francis in 1907 and again in 1913.

Marin County vied with Hollywood and Niles California to be the seat of film making in the state. In 1911, the Essanay Film Company (some forty of its successful Broncho Billy movies were shot in Marin) was the first of a succession of studios to call Marin County home. They were followed by the United Keanograph Studio, the Navarra Studios (studio credits included Sealed Orders), the California Motion Picture Corporation (studio credits include Salomy Jane, Minty's Triumph, The Unwritten Law (based on the Madison Square Garden Restaurant murder of famed architect Stanford White by Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw over the Girl in the Red Velvet Swing - Evelyn Nesbit), Mignon, Faust, and the Eternal Mephisto), the Leon Douglass Natural Color Motion Picture Company (studio credits included Cupid Angling) and a successor to the California Motion Picture Corporation, renamed The Michelena Studios (studio credits included Just Squaw, Heart of Juanita, and Flame of Hellgate). >From 1920 until the advent of Lucasfilm, Ltd., in 1980, Marin County had lost in its bid to be the motion picture studio capital of the United States. (Id.)

In 1914, Masonic Brothers and architects Danforth Bliss and William Baker Faville designed the new Masonic Temple and headquarters building of the Grand Lodge of California, which was built at 25 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, to replace the building lost in the Great Earthquake and Fire. Their magnificent architectural accomplishment served as the home of the California Grand Lodge for forty years. Another major public building designed by this Masonic duo was the Oakland Library.

Salomy Jane stared Beatriz Michelena and had been filmed in and around San Rafael, including shots at Lake Lagunitas. The film premiered in San Francisco at the St. Francis Hotel in 1914.

In 1916, San Rafael resident, philanthropist and inventor Leon Douglass, one of the original founders of the Victor Talking Machine Co., patented a color film process, multiple image process, and founded the Leon Douglass Natural Color Motion Picture Company: He wrote, directed, and produced his own feature film at San Rafael at the old studio of the California Motion Picture Company, titled Cupid Angling, using the new color and multiple imaging processes. The color test short (envisioned as part of a feature that was never made) included Masonic Bros. Luther Burbank (Santa Rosa Lodge No. 57) posing with red roses, and Bro. William Jennings Bryan (raised in Lincoln Lodge No. 19, Lincoln, Nebraska, and later affiliated with Temple Lodge No. 247, Miami, Florida ) standing in front of an United States flag, and premiered at Douglass' Lincoln Avenue home on May 22, 1917: This and the color feature film Cupid Angling were the first color films produced in the United States. Cupid Angling included cameo appearances by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. (Id.)

In 1937 when the bridge spanned the Golden Gate, the pressure for development increased. Mill Valley Mason, George H. Harlan, Jr., P.M., helped establish the Bridge District, acting as its attorney. During World War II people came from all across the country to work in the Sausalito shipyards and at Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato.

The 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition held "Masonic Day" which brought 20,000 Masons and their families to Treasure Island for the day.

From 1850 to 1950 the population of Marin increased by 85,000 people. Twenty years later there were an additional 123,000 residents. Population growth has slowed since then and is now about 245,000.

Marin has attracted progressive people who have supported the purchase of land for parks and community uses. William Kent donated the Muir Woods for a park in 1908 and his mother Adaline, donated land for the Tamalpais Centre, which was eventually given to the College of Marin. In 1971 conservationists pressured the federal government to purchase coastal property and protect it from development. In 1972 the Golden Gate National Recreational Area was created. It encompasses the Marin Headlands, Muir Woods and thousands of acres along the Pacific Coast.