6 - Farming and Culture: Muir Beach AD

WAYSIDE TITLE: Farming and the Cultural Landscape

VIEW FROM WAYSIDE: This panel is set at the gate across the road from the Pelican Inn, a brick building painted white, with steep sloping brown tile roof with a tall chimney.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A photo of several tilled garden rows surrounded by lush, green grass and trees. The most prominent row is full of flowering plants with purple, white red and orange blossoms. On the left of the garden photo is a superimposed image of leafy chard, with green leaves and a veiny, magenta stalk.

TEXT: Within the Redwood Creek Watershed, there are many examples of people living compatibly with the native landscape while cultivating the rich riparian soils. For thousands of years Coast Miwok created shelter and found sustenance in this fertile floodplain. When Europeans took over the land, they leased parcels to Portuguese dairymen who sailed here from the Azores in search of a better life. The immigrants settled and worked in small agricultural communities nearby and established dairy ranches.

George Wheelwright, a wealthy entrepreneur, purchased the Green Gulch pasture adjacent to Redwood Creek in 1945. He modified the creek, constructed a levee and grazed cattle here until he sold the land to the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1960s. The Zen Center ended the grazing, enabling the native landscape to return. The Center now runs Green Gulch Farm, growing organic produce for local businesses and farmers' markets.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A black and white illustration of a Coast Miwok woven basket with a triangle pattern running. A row of reeds and a few trees are in the background. The era is 'over 6,000 years ago.'

CAPTION: As food came into season, the Coast Miwok moved about to sustainably harvest the abundant resources of the ocean and creek.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A black and white photo of men, women and children in the 1870s. Some are standing, others on horseback, all are facing the camera which captures several heads of cattle and a white farm building with an angled roof behind them.

CAPTION: The Azorean dairy farmers worked on local ranches. Their efforts helped Marin County become California's largest milk and butter producer.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A color photo of several brown cows grazing in a green pasture with a stream in the background, Eucalyptus trees in the distance and fog rolling in over a green hillside. The era is listed as 'the 1940s to the 1960s.'

CAPTION: Intensive cattle grazing eroded the land and degraded the creek.

DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE: A color photo three kids and one adult in a green field, their eyes trained on a beehive behind clear glass at Green Gulch Farm.

CAPTION: The Green Gulch Farm practices strive to balance human uses and natural processes.