San Anselmo (Spanish for ‘”Saint Anselm”‘) is an incorporated town in Marin County, California, United States. Take a look below for 15 amazing and fun facts about San Anselmo, California, United States.
1. San Anselmo is located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of San Rafael, at an elevation of 46 feet (14 m).
2. It is located about 20 miles (32 km) north of San Francisco.
3. The town is bordered by San Rafael to the east, Fairfax to the west, and Ross to the south. Mount Tamalpais dominates the view to the south. The population was 12,830 at the 2020 census.
4. The land in and around San Anselmo was mostly pastoral until 1874, when the North Pacific Coast Railroad (NPC) added to its line a spur track from San Anselmo to San Rafael.
5. In 1875, the railroad completed a line from Sausalito to Tomales and north to Cazadero via San Anselmo.
6. For a few years, the town was referred to on railroad maps as “Junction”, but in 1883 the name San Anselmo came back into use.
7. The San Anselmo post office opened in 1892.
8. Two postal substations were operated: Lansdale, from 1924 to 1962, and Yolanda, from 1924 to 1954.
9. From 1902 until the early 1940s, San Anselmo was part of Marin’s Northwestern Pacific (in 1907, investors formed the NWP) Electric Train system. The Miracle Mile’s and Center Boulevard’s current “raised roadbed” were the railroad’s right of way.
10. Becoming unprofitable as a result of competition from the automobile and the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge, the railway was officially closed on March 1, 1941. The last of the major San Anselmo railroad station buildings was razed in 1963, according to the town’s timeline.
11. The 1913 electric train schedule shows a commute time from San Anselmo to the Sausalito Ferry to the Ferry Building in San Francisco of a mere 58 minutes, including the 32-minute ferry transit.
12. San Anselmo incorporated on April 9, 1907. Its name came from the Punta de Quintin land grant, which marked the valley as the Canada del Anselmo, or Valley of Anselm, Anselm being the name of a Native American who was buried in the area. San Anselmo was a silent film capital in the early 1900s.
13. During World War II, the Army based a small ammunition storage dump, known as ASP #2, about 2 miles (3.2 km) up Butterfield Road from Sir Francis Drake Blvd. The facility was located between the road and San Anselmo Creek and had 23 to 45 men stationed there. There were two batteries composed of four-inch antiaircraft cannon manned by five soldiers on a 24-hour basis. One battery was on Stuyvesant Drive and the other on Oak Springs Hill. During the war, the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, located in the old Hotaling mansion, was still open and provided a pleasant break from “grueling” guard duty, according to those stationed at the ammo dump.
14. During World War II, air raid wardens, like Zinnia and Alfred Heiden of San Francisco Blvd., patrolled their assigned neighborhood during nighttime air raid drills to notify neighbors of any light that showed out of their houses. Windows were covered with cloth or thick paper during the war to deny enemy bombers illuminated nighttime bombing targets.
15. In the late afternoon of November 2, 1941, five weeks before the US entered the war, San Anselmo residents were startled when two low-flying Curtiss P-40 warplanes roared up the valley at just above roof level and crashed into the east side of Bald Hill (often incorrectly reported as Mount Baldy or Bald Mountain) at 5:40pm.
