Cultural Corridor: Marin County
By Shonquis Moreno
Explore everything from art and architecture to history and science along the SMART rail line that runs along Highway 101.
From architecturally significant landmarks to local history and contemporary art, the corridor containing the future Eames Institute museum cultivates a rich cultural landscape—easily explored along the SMART train line, by rail, car, or bicycle. We begin our journey in Marin County, heading north, and then, in a companion guide, resume our trail at the southern end of Sonoma County.
Marin County
Image courtesy of Bradain Bello
Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (Marin MoCA)
Check the website for classes and limited museum hours Wednesday through Sunday.
Nearest SMART station: San Rafael (11-minute walk)
Sound baths, teen poets, tai chi, summer camps, workshops, nature-inspired projects, and exhibitions of contemporary painting, ceramics, sculpture, and multimedia art. You name it, Marin MoCA is on a creative mission to encourage making locally and to connect North Bay communities “through exploration of the bold ideas that inspire today’s leading artists.”
Marin History Museum
Check the website for tours and upcoming exhibitions.
Nearest SMART stop: San Rafael (0.5 miles, 12-minute walk)
Set in the house of Louise A. Boyd, an early 20th-century socialite, philanthropist, explorer, geographer, and photographer, who was the first woman to fly over the North Pole, this museum contains thousands of local historical artifacts. The Marin History Museum has also curated a series of QR-coded sites around San Rafael, where pedestrians can learn more about important events, people, and places in both English and Spanish.
Mission San Rafael Arcángel
Before going, please call 415-456-3016 to confirm hours or schedule tours for 10+ people.
Nearest SMART stop: San Rafael (10-minute walk)
San Rafael Arcángel is the penultimate in the chain of 21 historical California missions. Founded in 1817 and named after the angel of healing, it helped Mission Dolores to care for ailing Indigenous Americans and rapidly grew into a ranch replete with orchards, livestock, farmland, and a shipwright. In 1822, it was elevated to a mission that would eventually serve under the flags of Spain, Mexico, California, and the U.S. Although razed in 1870, it was resurrected in replica 70 years later.
Marin County Civic Center
Docent-led tours Wednesday at 1:00 pm and Friday at 10:30 am. Buy tickets in advance.
Nearest SMART stop: Marin Civic Center (12-minute walk)
Go behind-the-scenes in one of the last major buildings designed by one of America’s finest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright. Bridging the surrounding hills since 1957, it has featured in two sci-fi classics (Gattaca and THX 1138) and had its sky blue roof refurbished for $21 million. Don’t miss the 172-foot, 3-sided golden spire, skylit mall, pool, and gardens. The library sits under an 80-foot-wide dome not far from the smallest home Wright ever designed: Eddie’s doghouse. On the first floor, the original architectural model details a number of elements that were never built.
Hamilton Field History Museum
Open Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 12:00–4:00 pm.
Nearest SMART stop: Novato Hamilton (13-minute walk)
For history buffs and aviation enthusiasts: During WWII, Hamilton Army Airfield served as a heavy bombing training and staging facility. Designed in the Spanish Eclectic style, with stucco facades and Mission tile roofs, much of its original architecture has been preserved. In the firehouse, the museum offers a flight path through the history of the base (1935–1975) with model airplanes, maps, videos, diaries, and even a Link Trainer, the pioneering flight simulator that taught pilots to navigate without any visual reference to the ground.
Novato History Museum
Contact the museum to schedule a tour of the museum or Old Town Novato.
Nearest SMART stop: Novato Downtown (5-minute walk)
Even a decade after the Gold Rush in 1860, the population of the Novato “settlement” was just 234. Housed in the pretty 1850 Postmaster’s House, the Novato History Museum and its archives take visitors on a journey from the land grant days of the 1800s and the growth of dairies and chicken farms in the early 1900s into the 21st century when the Eames Institute is building a world-class museum here. Explore at your own pace or join docent-guided tours of the museum or Old Town Novato.
Museum of the American Indian
Check the website for upcoming events.
Nearest SMART stop: Novato Downtown (13-minute bike ride, 9-minute drive)
Marin and Sonoma counties sit on the ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people. Through educational programs, exhibitions, community events, and cultural resources, the Museum of the American Indian “uplifts, supports, and makes visible” the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. They thrived in these landscapes prior to European contact, skilled in basketry, flint knapping, fishing, clamshell bead and cordage making. The museum hosts lectures, readings, and workshops about local tribes, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), Indigenous identity, and the culture, craft, and creativity of those native to the nation.
Buck Institute
Hour-long, docent-led tours at 11:00 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Nearest SMART stop: Novato San Marin (18-minute bike ride or 4-minute drive)
The Buck Institute’s world-class science is made possible by world-class architecture. A pioneer in the study of aging and the first biomedical research institute dedicated to the subject, Buck unites scientists from a variety of fields to discover how people can “live better longer.” Celebrated Chinese-born American architect I.M. Pei designed the campus in 1999, using bright travertine quarried in Italy and Idaho, to encourage collaboration across disciplines instead of isolating researchers in subject silos.
Conceptual rendering by Herzog & de Meuron
Future Museum of the Eames Institute
Nearest SMART stop: Novato San Marin (6-minute bike ride or 3-minute drive)
Our museum will open in 2030 on the iconic former Birkenstock campus. With EHDD, Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron are revitalizing the buildings to create a dynamic cultural space that will serve as more than a repository for extraordinary objects. It will be a living organism hosting cultural and educational programming to spark what Ray and Charles Eames called creative “chain reactions.” The goal will be to forge constellations of connections with people everywhere who share the belief that curiosity is the most powerful tool we possess.
Olompali State Park
Open daily at 9:00 am. Gates to the park close promptly at 5:00 pm.
Nearest SMART stop: Downtown Novato (16-minute bike ride or 7-minute drive)
At Olompali, visit the Burdell mansion, gardens, and ranch or hike, ride horses, and picnic on the slopes of Mt. Burdell, overlooking the Petaluma River and San Pablo Bay. Because the Coast Miwok inhabited the area continuously from as early as 6,000 BC until the 1850s, part of an indigenous village is being replicated, including a native plant garden and two kotchas (houses) made from redwood bark. Nearby “Kitchen Rock” is a large boulder once used by the community as a mortar for grinding acorns and seeds into flour. Birdwatchers, don’t miss the thrushes, woodpeckers, raptors, and migrating species along the Olompali Trail.
Pick up the trail again in Sonoma County.
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