Ten things worth knowing about San Rafael

Most people know San Rafael as the place where Highway 101 slows down through the middle of Marin. Stay a while and the city turns out to have a few good stories. Here are ten, each one checked against the people who keep the record.

1. It is named for the angel of healing

The city takes its name from Mission San Rafael Arcángel, which was named for St. Raphael the Archangel, traditionally the angel of bodily healing. The choice was deliberate: the mission's job was to care for people who were sick.

2. It began as a helper mission

The mission was founded on December 14, 1817, not as a full mission but as an asistencia, a helper to Mission Dolores in San Francisco, in the homeland of the Coast Miwok. It went on to become the 20th of California's 21 Spanish missions. The chapel on Fifth Avenue today is a 1949 replica, standing beside the 1919 parish church.

3. It is Marin's oldest city, and turned 150 in 2024

San Rafael is the oldest city in Marin County. It incorporated in 1874, and the City Council proclaimed 2024 its 150th anniversary year, a milestone shared with the San Rafael Fire Department, which marked its own 150th the same year.

4. Its library began as a temperance reading room

The San Rafael Public Library started in 1887 as a coffee and reading room run by the local Women's Christian Temperance Union. Later, Judge William W. Morrow, a San Rafael resident, lunched with Andrew Carnegie and came away with the gift doubled from $12,500 to $25,000. The Carnegie building on E Street opened on January 9, 1909, and its renovation, finished in 2025, earned a regional public works award in 2026.

5. It has a sister city in Scotland

Captain Robert Dollar, the timber and shipping magnate who owned the mansion now known as Falkirk Cultural Center, was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1844. In October 1988 San Rafael and Falkirk made the connection official and became sister cities.

6. Frank Lloyd Wright's only government buildings stand here

Marin County commissioned its Civic Center in 1957, and by the county's account it and the post office across the street are the only government buildings Wright ever built. The 26 architects the county interviewed before him had proposed bulldozing the hills; Wright drove around the site for about 20 minutes and decided to span them with a series of arches instead. He died in 1959, before it was built. The administration wing was completed in 1962 and the Hall of Justice in 1969. Look up at the 172-foot gold spire, then take a docent tour or the free self-guided app to find the furniture built in San Quentin's wood shop.

7. A Chinese shrimp village survives on its shoreline

From the 1850s, Chinese fishermen worked San Pablo Bay for shrimp and shipped most of the dried catch to China. Laws that followed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, including a 1905 ban on exporting shrimp and a 1911 ban on the traditional bag nets, emptied their village at China Camp, a few miles east of downtown. The state bought the land in 1976, and since 2012 the nonprofit Friends of China Camp has run the park.

8. Parts of town sit near or below the bay

The land in parts of San Rafael has slowly sunk until it lies near or below the level of the bay, which is why winter storms arriving with high tides can flood streets. San Rafael Creek runs in a channel the federal government approved in 1918, and in early 2023 it was fully dredged for the first time in 20 years. With an El Niño winter forecast, the City Council declared a local emergency on October 5, 2026 so the city could prepare.

9. Its French bread bakery is more than a century old

Frank Bordenave opened his first bakery, the Parisian, on B Street in 1918, and moved to 1553 Fourth Street in 1928. Bordenave's French Bread Bakery now bakes at 1512 Fourth Street, across the street from that 1928 address, and still supplies restaurants and delis around the Bay Area.

10. The chefs have their own farmers market

The Thursday Marin Farmers Market, held beside the lagoon at the Civic Center, was the Agricultural Institute of Marin's first market when it opened in 1983. Its organizers call it the Chef's Market, because restaurant cooks from around the Bay Area shop its 85-plus stalls for meats, breads, pastries and produce. Ordinary shoppers are just as welcome, and it runs rain or shine.

That is ten. Ask around at the mission, at Falkirk or at the bread counter on Fourth Street, and you will collect an eleventh before long.