Bolinas is an artsy craftsy community that started out a lot like Mendocino...but ended up tredding water and not becoming a tourist have as Mendo did.

I had a friend, named "Doc" Stanley. He was totally nuts as many on the coast were back in the 70's....Docs wife had her brakes go on her car and she ran into a schoolbus turned into a home by a black American whose name escapes me but the accident happened in Albion. Doc didn't have insurance and his wife neither, so they promised to pay this guy a bit at a time. Being very poor, they never met the payments and one day in Fort Bragg, Docs wife smelled smoke. It was a fire outside her house. She went out and called the the Fort Bragg Volunteer Fire Department. It was judged an arson...and Doc was really po'ed so he went to Albion in his car with a loaded gun. He met the fellow on the road, about 3 miles in--- in the pygmy forest which is a very esoteric place on its own...the other feller pulled a knife...Doc pulled his gun and shot around 6 times... DOA was the deal and Doc got a few years in San Quentin...When he was released..he had gone totally nuts..He came to me one day and said the whole hippie community in Albion had a contract on his life...so he decided to move to Bolinas....it was as close to old hip stuff as he could get without actually being back on the Mendo Coast...Every time I saw him at Racines Art Supply in Fort Bragg, he was so jittery..kept talking about a hit out on him...We all thought he was just paranoid from the stay in Q.... Well to keep it a bit shorter...Doc was killed by a knife in the back...in Bolinas...and nobody was ever charged....so that is what the ethos of an area is all about...what you think of the whole part..not just topogaphy but the whole! Got it?!? Good luck...It's ripe for an aftershock of the rather large one there on the San Andreas...

Here is a nice article:
Point Reyes is separated from the rest of the coastal area by the San Andreas fault, which travels right under Tomales Bay - it's actually on a different continental plate than most of California. Point Reyes is on the Pacific plate, and the rest of the continental US is on the North American plate. Geologists theorize that the Pt. Reyes area has actually been traveling northwest at an average of over an inch a year, though earthquakes can cause greater shifts between the plates. You can visit the actual epicenter of the famous 1906 San Francisco quake on a short paved trail from Bear Valley Visitor Center - movements of up to 16 feet occurred during this quake.

• Geology Bolinas