Mon 2 Jun 2014
White House Pool enchanting despite vandalism and poison oak
Posted by DavidMitchell under Point Reyes Station, West Marin nature
[2] Comments
White House Pool, which is maintained by the County of Marin, is my favorite park in West Marin. The park, which is midway between Point Reyes Station and Inverness Park, includes a few picnic tables and open areas, but mostly it consists of a beautiful trail along Papermill Creek. The “pool” is basically a wide bend in the creek.
Point Reyes Station and Black Mountain as seen from White House Pool.
Here’s its story. A “fast-talking” developer named Isaac Freeman “began hawking lots in 1909” in a tract that was to become Inverness Park, to quote the late historian Jack Mason. “White House Pool, just south of the Park, was a watering place where Freeman had bathhouses, water tank, windmill, and tract office.”
The path through the park has become popular with dog walkers, most of whom responsibly bag their pooches’ poop.
The name “White House” has nothing to do with the US capital. Rather it refers to a white building that at different times played significant roles in the area’s history. It was “one of the oldest houses on Point Reyes,” Mason wrote in Earthquake Bay. “Edward I. Butler [1874-1961] lived in it as a boy before going on to a career on the bench and in politics.”
Butler would become the San Rafael city attorney; would serve two terms in the California Assembly; would go on to be elected Marin County district attorney; was appointed and then repeatedly reelected to the Marin Superior Court bench, serving 31 years. All this according to the County of Marin website.
One of the county’s greatest challenges in maintaining the park is controlling its abundant poison oak. Pacific poison oak is naturally rampant throughout West Marin, and unfortunately most humans have allergic reactions to touching its oil and to inhaling its smoke during fires. Common reactions are rashes, blisters, and intense itching.
“World War II gave the [white] house new importance as an Army communications center. Telephone Company employee Earl Hall, who rented it, took calls incoming from the Pacific Theater on his telephone, one of the few around,” Mason wrote. “His wife Avis recalls messages from the big White House coming through her little one!
“A soldier with fixed bayonet stood outside searching cars for possible Japanese infiltrators.”
The pedestrian bridge near the White House Pool parking lot at times is so overgrown with poison oak that it takes care not to brush against it.
After the war, the building evolved into a lightly used fishing cabin. “When the white house… fell into disrepair, owners William and Lloyd Gadner, reacting to a county order they either bring it up to ‘code’ or demolish it, chose the latter,” Mason wrote. “I have rueful memories of that 1969 morning, holding off Walter Kantala’s bulldozer while I hurried home for a camera.”
Among the delights of the White House Pool trail are a series of side-paths through more poison oak mixed in with other foliage. (You can avoid the bad stuff if you’re at all careful, and it’s worth the effort.) These paths lead to clearings on the creek bank where a walker can rest on a bench while enjoying views of the foot of Tomales Bay.
For those wanting to keep further away from any poison oak, there are also a few benches in open areas.
As Lynn observes, Marin County Parks and Open Space Department periodically cuts back the poison oak that protrudes through the railing of the White House Pool footbridge. A member of the department staff on Monday told us the frequency of cutting depends on what staff observe and what the public reports to the county.
On Monday, however, the staffer’s main concern was not poison oak but a vandal who over the weekend managed to drive around the barricades at the edge of the parking lot in order to “spin donuts” in dry grass. I doubt the jerk will ever be identified, but if he is, he ought to be sentenced to clearing poison oak at White House Pool.
Dave, good article but, for the record, the “white house” was not located where the park is, but at the southwest corner of Balboa and SF Drake where, until recently, Rig and Trish Currie lived in a newer house.
The development you refer to at the now-park was the home of the Alcantara family (descendants of Mexican grantee Rafael Garcia); there was a small house (not the white one Jack Mason refers to) and a prominent barn that survived into the early 1970s. Adjacent to that on the east was the community baseball field, complete with lights, which was built by Toby Giacomini and his friends.
There are a few good early stories about the bottom-of-Balboa/White House Pool corner where a notorious roadhouse stood in the 1850s. James McMillan Shafter developed a dairy ranch there, called the Piedmont Ranch; the “white house” was the ranch house. Happy to share a book I put together about the place.
Thanks for adding information, Dewey. I hadn’t intended to imply that Isaac Freeman’s “tract office” (or any building associated with it) was the “white house,” for which the park is named. (The post noted that Judge Butler, who was born in 1874, lived in the white house as a boy and that the tract office opened around 1909.) My apologies if I was unclear when I wrote that the namesake white house “at different times played significant roles in the area’s history.” The general “area” I had in mind is similar to the one you mention. It encompasses the present park, as well as the small cluster of homes at the foot of Balboa Avenue facing the park’s north entrance.
In any case, there’s more bad news this week about reckless motorists “spinning donuts” in West Marin. A sheriff’s deputy on Tuesday said that besides the park vandalism, somebody last weekend also spun donuts on two West Marin ranches, including one in Hicks Valley.