I found this article that a neighbor had given us years ago. Very interesting that a big part of the film industry started up in San Rafael long before Hollywood in the 1910s and 1920s:
Location of the grounds of the California Motion Picture Company in Sun Valley.Extracts from Independent Journal Article written in the 1960s.
Go to Fifth and K Streets in San Rafael. When pioneer Alexander Forbes, who owned this part of the rancho named Santa Margarita y las Gallinas, or St. Margaret and the Hens, developed the Forbes tract, he named this road Culloden Avenue for the famous Scots battlefield. Forbes hill, immediately to the north, had a San Rafael water company reservoir by 1869. The creek that used to fill it ran beside the road.
Walk uphill on K Street to Solano. From 1913 to 1917 this was the main entrance to the California Motion Picture Corp. grounds. The stonewall visible further uphill was a boundary of the studio property; other perimeters of the studio lot were California, Fifth and 3 streets.
When you reach the patriotic red, white, and blue mailbox that faces Solano, stand beside it for a moment and facing westerly, try to imagine cowboys and Indians, bandits, miners, hanging judges, and dance hall girls swarming along this long golden sunbathed stretch of land.
Stroll along the winding lane that is Solano and when you parallel the area on your right, now occupied by the green house whose garden and fruiting citrus tree makes it look like a little piece of Arizona, you are about where the studio offices stood. Continue further until you are abreast of a big Japanese-inspired garden with a romantic crab apple tree. According to cinematographer Geoffrey Bell, here, at 139 Solano, was where the glass-walled, light-filled studio stage stood.
Across the street is San Rafaels Sun Valley park. Stroll into it, between the lawns and play equipment. Uphill, beyond the restrooms, bear right along the bench of land you find there. Once Forbes road, it now leads to a charming little gazebo with tables and a barbeque pit. As you return from the gazebo look on your right for a narrow footpath that meanders upward across the hill face.
Follow this path to some steps and climb then to the junction of Windsor and Chestnut streets. From the landing both a big outcropping rock and Mount Tam are visible. They often played prominent roles in the pictures. California Motion Picture Corp had picked up all the film rights to Bret Hartes stories, and based their Westerns on them. See any early Bret Harte adaptation and you are likely to see this view from rock to peak. When you have enjoyed this distant vista, descend the steps again, swinging toward the red-roofed water tank toward Alpine street. In the studios heyday, Geoffrey Bell told me, stage coaches, broughams, democrat wagons and buckboards were line up along here, waiting to be cut off at the pass by Indians or bad hats.
On Alpine, instead of returning to the park, bear right to California, then left downhill. If this were 1916, when you reach Humboldt Street, the film laboratory would have stood on your left. Now it is a row of homes. Continue downhill and just before you reach the little clutch of shops, look on the left hand side of the street. There, the one thing unchanged on the valley floor is the creek, which was often filmed as it gurgled along framed against the eucalyptus. Fifth Avenue Cleaners occupies the site of the studio cookhouse while the dining hall stretched easterly along Fifth.
Bear right on Fifth, which came into being for access to the Mount Tamalpais Cemetery visible uphill toward the northwest. Stroll toward its white mausoleum, which gives a Forest Lawn feeling, appropriately Hollywood. Soon you find yourself at Happy Lane. When you reach Sun Valley school, the terrain seems to open into a wide expanse of countryside with horses, barns, and an old farmhouse visible on the hill, a little microcosm leftover from yesterday.
One of the studio stages from 1919. This area is now where Sun Valley School sits.
