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"The other night this writer was in San Rafael and the trim, well-kept and excellently-lighted main street made a very attractive appearance," wrote an anonymous turn-of-the-century correspondent from the Mill Valley Record. "To look up Fourth Street from the union depot reminds one of the 'Great White Way' in miniature." Over the years, through cattle drives, parades, hangings and shootouts, cardsharps, low-riders, toreadors and Franciscan friars have made Fourth Street Marin's most urbane gathering spot.

It's been all of that since Marin's first settlers, the Coast Miwok, settled in an area between today's Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue at the base of the region's northern hills. A few centuries of fun, fishing and foraging later, soldiers, priests and "converted" Indians from Mission San Francisco de Asís across the bay arrived at what is now the corner of Fifth Avenue and A Street ("in the lee of Mount Tamalpais and beneath a line of rolling, tawny hills," in the words of Father Mariano Payeras) in December of 1817 and established Mission San Rafael Arcangel, the 20th and next-to-last mission in the chain from San Diego to Sonoma. Adjacent vineyards, gardens and orchards covering an area now bordered by Lootens Place, Lincoln Avenue, Third Street and Fifth Avenue produced wheat, barley, corn, beans and peas in numbers that surpassed all expectations, and it was said that San Rafael's grapes were the best in California.

In 1834 the missions were secularized and converted into pueblos by edict of the new Mexican government. San Rafael pueblo and its environs were granted to Tim Murphy, a genial Irishman who acted as both Indian agent (he spoke Miwok with a brogue) and alcalde of the pueblo. Murphy's most famous contribution to the local history, however, was his inauguration of Oct. 24 as San Rafael Day, which started as a feast to honor St. Rafael Arcangel and over the decades (it lasted 52 years) turned Fourth Street into a riotous scene of dancing, gorging, all-night drinking, horse racing, blackjack, bullfighting (at the Plaza de Toros at Second and B streets) and every other sort of revelry, indulged in by ranchers, prospectors and scum from the Barbary Coast out for a killing.

After California joined the union in 1850, forty-eight 300-square-foot city lots were laid out along numbered and lettered streets projecting from the mission, which also acted as Marin's first county courthouse. The first store in the vicinity opened that November—trappers and ranchers were the principal customers—and within a few months Fourth Street had a saloon, a boarding house and a post office. (Years later a visitor recalled that "all life and business was conducted on one little street of one little block.") At Fourth and C was the office of Louis Peter, the French nobleman, physician, horticulturist and reputed finest swordsman in all of California. Just up Fourth was the log jail where hangings were conducted from a nearby oak tree. The main business of San Rafael, however, was livestock. The surrounding hills were home to thousands of head of cattle, and it was common to see the herds driven up Fourth to the slaughterhouse on San Rafael Creek.

The town of San Rafael was incorporated in 1874; the first meeting of the board of trustees was held above a C Street saloon. An elaborate new Greek Revival county courthouse was erected with cupola, columned portico and, just inside the front door, a gallows. All of San Quentin's executions were carried out here, including that of murderer Lee Doon; convivial onlookers nearly rioted in their mad scramble over the body for souvenirs after the hanging, and thereafter executions were performed at San Quentin instead. Fourth Street got gaslights in 1875, and Gordon's Opera House opened soon afterward. The street's chronic mud and dust were brought under control and so, eventually, was a perpetual mosquito problem that got so bad at one point, doctors recommended avoiding the town altogether.

The 1906 earthquake and fire shot San Rafael's population up from 4,000 to 6,500 as refugees from San Francisco raced for the suburbs. Two of them opened memorable businesses: Billy Shannon, the boxer, who ran a restaurant-bar with a small ring for exhibition prizefighting, and the Carson Glove Company, which became San Rafael's first industrial enterprise. The first electric streetlights—elaborate chandelier-type fixtures—were installed in 1914; electric streetcars were rejected by voters as "too noisy." Three years later, thousands of onlookers lined Fourth Street to cheer Company D of the Fifth Infantry as they marched down to the Union Depot to head overseas and whip the Kaiser.

Fourth Street suffered a blow in 1957 when fire destroyed a block of businesses between D and E streets, but downtown has undergone other, more positive changes in the past several decades. The old train depot was lovingly restored in 1971 and now houses the Whistlestop organization. There were merchant-sponsored redevelopment projects in 1963 and again in the '70s, and Fourth Street's been repaved at least twice by Ghilotti Brothers, a company with a San Rafael pedigree dating back to 1914. The street itself gained international fame in 1973 as the lowriders' main drag in George Lucas's American Graffiti.

A good way to experience today's Fourth Street is to wander through the Farmers Market extravaganza that takes place every Thursday evening through the summer. This good old-fashioned block party features freshly baked pies, fabulous pickles and preserves, musicians of every stripe and genre, gyros and pad Thai and corn on the cob crying out to be barbecued and every sort of herb, root, spice and nut you've never heard of. Smack in the middle of all this multicultural urbanity rises the gorgeously restored Rafael movie palace, a city landmark for much of this century. Fourth Street, in other words, remains Marin's main drag.

DOWNTOWN SAN RAFAEL AT A GLANCE

FIRE: Station 1, 1039 C St.; Station 2, 210 Third St.
LIBRARY: San Rafael Public Library, 1100 E. St.
PARKS: Albert Park, Boyd Memorial Park
POST OFFICE: 910 D St.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS: San Rafael High, 185 Mission Ave.

For more information about neighborhoods in and around San Rafael click on the links below:

Gerstle Park
Sun Valley
Dominican
The Canal
Pt. San Pedro Road
Terra Linda
Santa Venetia
Marinwood