Old Mill Market Hikers' Trail Map

Mill Valley had been a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts since well before 1900, with weekend visitors from across the San Francisco Bay Area arriving by train at the downtown Depot and many setting out on foot up Mount Tamalpais. In 1949, Norman D. Clark of Clark's Grocery, weary of repeatedly giving hikers directions along Throckmorton Avenue, hired Walter Finn of Muir Woods National Monument and Melville Whittaker of Mount Tamalpais State Park to help design an oversize hiking trail map on the west side of his grocery store across from Old Mill Park. The store later disappeared and the map was covered by shingles in the late 1950s, but during preparations for demolition in 2004 members of the Mill Valley Historical Society uncovered and salvaged it piece by piece, then carefully stored it for more than 14 years before painstakingly reassembling it. The map preserves a historical picture of local hiking trails, though it no longer accurately reflects the location of many of them.

Mill Valley, California · United States