Branwell Fanning - Tiburon and Belvedere

From this Victorian home, three generations of Reed family members watched over the development of the Tiburon peninsula. Built by John Joseph Reed, this home was where his son John Paul and daughter Clotilde, pictured on her horse, lived their entire lives. Clotilde still owned more than 2,000 acres of Tiburon when she died in 1940. The house was demolished in the 1960s.

John Thomas Reeds daughter, Hilarita, married Dr. Benjamin Lyford. They built a large Victorian Gothic house on the Strawberry Peninsula. In 1957, the house was threatened with destruction and, as the oldest surviving residence in Marin County, it was saved and barged to the site of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary in Tiburon. After extensive restoration, the Lyford House became the center for many community activities and weddings.

Rose Verrall, the daughter of a Portuguese dairy worker, became a great favorite of John Paul Reed, the bachelor son in the Reed family. His aunts and sisters would not let her into the house. Before he died, John Paul gave Rose 10 acres, where she lived and raised a small herd of goats. Rose lived the rest of her life in a ramshackle cottage on her land, ignoring the many offers for the valuable waterfront property. Rose became famous locally and was known as Rosie, the Goat Lady.

Rosie and her goats were a familiar sight in Tiburon as she walked to nearby shops or just took her charges out for a stroll. She finally gave the property to the Marin Conservation League. It became the headquarters of the Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary, which also consists of 900 acres of environmentally important wetlands. Rosies cottage was rebuilt into a classroom for environmental studies. Bay-area schools bring busloads of students for nature classes.

Dairy cows covered the beautiful rolling hills of the Tiburon peninsula for almost 100 years. Central to each of the three main ranch operations was the dairy barn, where the cows came each day for milking. As subdivisions replaced ranching, the need for schools grew, and the dairy sites were available. The Bel Aire School, pictured here, was first opened in 1960 and was almost completely replaced by 2007. Grades three through five are taught here.

The Hilarita Dairy became the site of the Reed School, serving kindergarten through second grade. Hilarita Reed Lyford inherited the land from her father, John Reed, along with 1,000 acres on the east end of the peninsula. This school was also rebuilt from the ground up in 2007. The former Belvedere and Tiburon schools were converted to senior housing upon completion of the Reed Union School Districts three new schools.