My biggest nightmare, a wildfire broke out near my family home and I can only watch from afar. Trying to reach my cousins was impossible. No cell service. The cell tower is on the top of Mt. Barnabe is out because of the fire. Surrounded with flames. The small side valley, Arroyo/Barranca Road, where I grew up, could easily become a firetrap. Evacuation began right away as the potential for this wildfire to go rogue was huge. We heard from one cousin, James, who wasn’t home, but not the other, however, we're fairly certain he got out with the dog. Luckily the fire did not turn up Barranca Road, it headed south instead. TG.
It looks like the wildfire came up the shoulder closest to Devil's Gulch, where Sam Taylor's favorite white and only mule, Barnabe, was buried. Then the fire burned all the way up to the lookout, then headed down the mountain on our side of the ridge to the right, which means the Nunes Ranch homesteads was threatened, plus a few newer homes in the trees, as it headed back towards Lagunitas again. Had it burned straight across, along the ridge that separates us from Nicasio, we wouldn't have stood a chance. The wildfire spread so quickly, that within minutes, the entire park side of the mountain was engulfed in flames— one of the evacuees, Dave Cort, said the flames were 100 feet high! Within two hours CalFire said it was 80% contained. Phew.
Ironically when Mt. Barnabe burned in the 1940s, that's also the same lower crest where it burned before. I used to find charred stumps in the gullies. Fire always returns to the scene of its crimes. My grandmother said the 1940s fire was caused by two boys smoking a pipe in the woods. This one was caused by a downed PG&E powerline on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Samuel P Taylor Park. In other words, preventable. PG&E seems to have a horrible safety record. I think their negligence disaster plan is to either blow up or burn down most of Northern California. Don’t forget the San Bruno gas fire. Also on PG&Es doorstep.
Someone insisted that this wildfire was named after the road it originated on, then told me to look it up, but Irving Fire Road is in Sleepy Hollow! Why not just call it the Mount Barnabe fire? And since I know every road in the area, I knew it wasn't right. Someone said there was once the Irving station, later Jewell? That was in the 1920s. I have an old NWPRR booklet, or photos of it, and I bet Irving isn’t listed on it. would remember something like that. Nope, not listed. But the main Tocaloma stop was Bertrand's Motel, an eerie haunted place when I was a child, was listed. No Irving stop. I later figured out the epicenter was near the Madrone group picnic site.
Cabe Silverhame says "Like most fires, it was named for a nearby geographic feature, in this case a former tiny settlement along the NW Pacific Railroad just east of Camp Taylor. Jewell is (was) much closer to Platform Bridge than the listed coordinates for Irving, but it's possible there was both an Irving station and an Irving 'populated place'. Here's the link to the USGS data."
The fire roads that lace the Valley feed off of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. The wildfire began off SFDB, a downed PG&E line caused it—152 acres. I know those old roads like the back of my hand, I've ridden or hiked every single one of them since I was a child. True, I don't know all the fire road names, but we never used any road names back then. We didn't even have house numbers. I remember the day when we got a house number, 50 Barranca Road. It took some getting used to. Roads tended to be colloquially named after geographic features—or where they went to, or originated from. Either the county or the fire department named most of the fireroads and didn't send us the memo. There are no street signs, that’s for sure. To make it even more surreal, the MCFD refers to sections of the fireroads as blocks. “The 200 & 300 blocks of Arroyo and the 100 block of Portola are now open…”
For example, we called our road Arroyo Road from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard all the way up to the Nunes ranch, and up to the tee junction. Then it became the Mt Barnabe Road. Or the road to the lookout. Who knew it was called Portola Avenue (that's a bit grand for a cow barn, don'tcha think?) that begins at Alamo Way, past the Nuneses homestead, then it morphs into Mountain King Road. And then it becomes Ridge Trail. Ok. But that's on the park side of the mountain. At the park boundary the road name stops dead. Maybe it has Alzheimer’s. Or did they abandon the rest of the road completely, leaving it nameless? Mind you, it’s all one long and winding road. A road of many names, it seems.
None of us knew that the fireroad past Sim van der Rijn’s place, to our own hill, was called Dickson Ridge Fire Trail. When did it become Dickson? They never even owned our ridge. From a topo map I learned that the fireroad to Lagunitas, to the Weaver's house on La Cresta, was called Alamo Way. Not even sure where Arroyo Road leaves off and Alamo Way begins, probably near the Howard's old place. Outsiders laying names on things. We never got the memo. No one asked us what the roads were called. Back in the day, the fireroads tended to be named after the ranchers who first settled there, or in Nicasio, called Road to the Ranches... We're remembering, alright, but not the Alamo way
from Facebook memories, vaguely rearranged and edited for clarity, added 9/21.
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