Diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations…to give entertainments, to found seminars, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes, they found in this manner, hospitals, prisons, and schools.” Some dozen improvement clubs existed in Marin County in the early Twentieth Century focused on a variety of betterment issues. In 1920 the early residents of Tamalpais Valley organized an improvement club, bought a lot on marginal land and built a clubhouse using lumber deconstructed from storage sheds at a military rifle range. Despite this modest beginning the clubhouse was the community social and political center. Its history demonstrates its importance through various decades in the absence of municipal government.
Lissa McKee is former state architectural historian who has lived in the Mill Valley area since 1988. Since retirement she has focused her independent research on Tamalpais Valley, transportation, and ranching history.