[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 139 (Wednesday, September 19, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1925]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             TRIBUTE TO THE TOWN OF SAN ANSELMO, CALIFORNIA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LYNN C. WOOLSEY

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 19, 2007

  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, I rise with pride today to invite you to 
join me in congratulating the Town of San Anselmo, California, on its 
official centennial.
  This charming town in one of the most beautiful counties in 
California derived its name from the Mexican designation of the area as 
La Laguna y Canada de Anselm, or the Waters and Valley of Anselm--after 
a Miwok Indian who was buried there. His tribe, the Coastal Miwoks, 
inhabited the land for thousands of years before Mexicans and Europeans 
arrived, surviving on the bounty of its creeks and forests.
  Since the early 19th century when it was formally established as a 
land grant under the Mexican government, the town has served as a 
transportation hub for the area and an intersection between rural West 
Marin and the county's municipal centers to the east. To this day, in 
fact, downtown San Anselmo is still referred to as The Hub.
  After California became the 31st of the United States of America, in 
1850, the southern part of town including The Hub, was purchased from 
its Mexican owners by James Ross, whose descendents still live and work 
there. Since then, San Anselmo has grown to become everything that 
epitomizes small-town America--welcoming to strangers, benevolent to 
neighbors, supportive to businesses and education, and environmentally 
friendly to the habitat.
  For example, when the Transcendental poet Ralph Waldo Emerson visited 
his niece in San Anselmo in 1871, he noticed of her husband's acreage 
that ``Three or four wild deer still feed on his land, and now and then 
come near the house. The trees of his wood were almost all new to us--
live-oak, madrona, redwood, and other pines than ours; and our garden 
flowers wild in all the fields.'' Even now, the wild deer still come to 
San Anselmo to feed in the gardens under the diverse arbors, verdant 
and prolific in what is one of Marin County's largest watersheds.
  Indeed, San Anselmo retained its pastoral quality even after the 
North Pacific Coast Railroad laid rails through the town beginning in 
1874. Already a transportation hub, the town went on the map as 
Junction, California. The coming of the industrial age did not, 
however, despoil the area's beauty.
  But San Anselmo is not just another idyllic town. Since 1892, it has 
been the home of the San Francisco Theological Seminary, which is known 
because of its architecture as San Anselmo's ``castle in the sky.'' 
With the establishment of this key Presbyterian institution, the town 
began to grow, and grew even more after the San Francisco earthquake of 
1906, when refugees from the City's North Beach transplanted their 
homes to the hills around San Anselmo, planted grapevines and gave the 
neighborhood the nickname ``Little Italy.''
  The next year, the town incorporated under the name Junction.
  Another institution that establishes San Anselmo as more than just a 
pretty place is the Carnegie Library, built in 1915. A gift of Andrew 
Carnegie, the ``patron saint of libraries,'' it is one of only 1,940 
such libraries in the nation. Its Spanish revival style building still 
serves this town where more than 96 percent of the adult population 
have earned a high school diploma, and 60 percent have one or more 
college degrees.
  With the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, many of those who 
had previously come to San Anselmo only to escape the cold San 
Francisco summers decided to make the town their permanent home. 
Schools and churches replaced ranch and farm land, and by 1974, when it 
officially became the Town of San Anselmo, thousands of families called 
it home.
  But San Anselmo is not just a propitious town for its residents. It 
welcomes visitors with equal neighborliness. In fact, Marin County 
newspaper readers recently chose San Anselmo as the ``Best town other 
than your own.'' A town without a single shopping mall, San Anselmo has 
also been voted ``Best in the West'' by Sunset magazine for antiques, 
offered for sale in 130 boutiques that line the two main streets of 
this small town.
  Despite the routine flooding of San Anselmo Creek, the weather in San 
Anselmo is ``nearly perfect,'' says Connie Rodgers, president of the 
San Anselmo Chamber of Commerce. She adds that ``You can't find a 
better place to live in the whole United States.''
  Indeed, where else can you find less than three square miles 
containing a castle, a creek, a series of world-class antique shops and 
five of the top 100 Bay Area restaurants?
  Madam Speaker, I offer my congratulations to San Anselmo on its first 
100 years and a wish for many happy returns of the occasion.

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