In the 1960s Gerbode Valley was slated to become Marincello, a Gulf Oil-financed city of ridgetop high-rises, a mile-long mall, and a hilltop hotel that won county approval in 1965. Ceremonial gates and a wide boulevard were actually built before a determined legal fight unraveled the zoning by 1970, and the Nature Conservancy secured the land for the public in 1972.
Now look out over this valley, all quiet grass and hawks riding the wind, and try to picture a city here. Because there very nearly was one. Back in the 1960s, a developer named Thomas Frouge came up this ground with big dreams and deep pockets, and the pockets belonged to Gulf Oil. He bought up better than two thousand acres, and he aimed to build a whole city on it. Not a subdivision, mind you. A city. Homes and towers for a mighty crowd of folks, by some tellings as many as thirty thousand souls. There'd be high-rises marching up these ridges, a shopping mall said to run about a mile end to end, and a grand hotel perched right up top where the fog rolls over. They gave it a name that sounded like a song. Marincello. And in 1965 the county went and approved the whole thing. This wasn't just talk, neighbor. Crews came in and built ceremonial gates, tall and proud, and laid down a broad boulevard, wide as any city street, running off into the empty hills. You can still trace where that road went. Now here's where it turns. A handful of lawyers down in Sausalito didn't care for how it all got approved, said the public notice was done wrong, and they took it to court. They dug in and they held on. By 1970 the courts threw the zoning right out. And in 1972 the Nature Conservancy stepped up, bought the land, and handed it over to you and me and everybody. So the city that was going to fill this valley never rose at all. The hawks kept the ridge. And the only towers up here are the ones the fog builds, then takes right back down.
Photo: Sportsfan919 · CC BY 3.0
