Ask three people waiting at the bus shelter on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard where they are, and all three will give the same one-word answer: the Hub. Ask any of them why it's called that, and the answers get vague fast. A bus stop. Where the routes meet. Nobody seems to know it's the second time that patch of ground has earned the name, or that the first time, it wasn't a nickname at all. It was the town's actual address on a map.
That's the thread the San Anselmo Historical Commission pulls on every month from spring through fall, and the last chance to hear it in person this year comes on Saturday, October 10.
The Fork in the Tracks
Long before any of this had a name that stuck, the ground where the Hub now sits was already a place where things converged. According to the town's own history page, artifacts found near the Hub suggest the spot had been a crossroads since the days when the Coast Miwok fished San Anselmo Creek and moved through the surrounding hills. By the mid-1800s, Mexican land grants had carved the valley into two pieces: the Sais family held the Canada de Herrera, running roughly from the Hub west toward Fairfax and Sleepy Hollow, while what is now the Seminary area and downtown belonged to Juan Bautista Cooper's grant, later purchased by James Ross, whose descendants still live in the area.
None of that explains the railroad name, though. That part is mechanical. In 1874 the North Pacific Coast Railroad ran a spur from San Anselmo to San Rafael. The following year it completed a second line, from Sausalito to Tomales, passing through the same spot. Two lines meeting at one point is, literally, a junction, and for a few years that's exactly what railroad maps called it.
The bus routes that converge at the Hub today follow close to the same logic the trains did a century and a half ago. Different lines meeting at one fixed point isn't a modern planning decision. It's the oldest fact about that intersection there is.
A Name Borrowed From a Land Grant, Not the Railroad
Here's the part most people who live here would not guess: the town's actual name has nothing to do with the railroad function that still defines its center. In the 1880s, San Anselmo dropped the working title of Junction and took its name instead from Cooper's original land grant, the one that had already been on file for decades by then. The railroad described what the place did. The land grant described who had once owned the paper on it. The town kept the second one and let the first one survive as slang.
That's why "the Hub" still works as a name today even though it appears on no street sign and no official document. It describes the one thing about that intersection that has never changed, while "San Anselmo" describes a 19th-century property transaction that most people who bank, eat, and catch the 22 bus there have never heard of.
The Disaster That Filled In the Blueprint
The town's next major shift wasn't planned. It was absorbed. Families who lost their homes in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire moved north and stayed, and the growth was fast enough that San Anselmo incorporated the following year, in 1907. The paperwork that made San Anselmo an official town wasn't the product of a growth strategy. It was a reaction to a disaster forty miles south, delivered to San Anselmo's doorstep by rail lines that had already been running for three decades by then.
A second wave arrived with the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937, which shortened the trip to San Francisco and brought another round of people who stayed. Both waves used the same infrastructure the railroad had built into the town's layout from the start: a fixed point where routes met, filling in around it as demand showed up.
The Building the Women's Club Built
The clearest physical marker of that earlier boom still stands two blocks from the Hub. In 1912, a group called the San Anselmo Women's Improvement Club formed with 34 members paying ten cents a month in dues, and one of its early projects was securing a public library for the town. They raised $600 through card parties and bake sales, thought the town was too small to qualify for a Carnegie grant, and applied anyway, with help from a local federal judge, William Morrow, who had previously helped San Rafael secure its own grant. The Carnegie Corporation approved $10,000. The Spanish Revival building, designed by W. Garden Mitchell, who also designed San Anselmo's Town Hall, opened on February 12, 1915, to a dedication the San Anselmo Herald covered as a full community event.
That building at 110 Tunstead Avenue is one of only 85 Carnegie library buildings still standing in California. It has also housed the San Anselmo Historical Museum on its lower level since a renovation in the 1990s connected the library to Town Hall through a gallery of historical displays.
What's Still Downstairs
The museum's collection runs roughly in chronological order, built from donated family items and photographs rather than acquired pieces, which means what's on display changes as new donations come in. Railroad-era artifacts sit alongside items tied to the town's early residents, connecting the exhibit floor directly back to the Junction story the walking tour tells outside. As of 2026, the museum keeps regular hours on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., with research visits available by appointment through the museum's contact page.
The Last Walk of the Year
The San Anselmo Historical Commission runs a free docent-led walk through downtown several times a year, led by Dick Miner and other commission members, covering the Hub's history, the railroad's role in building the town, and how the businesses and architecture along San Anselmo Avenue have changed since. The 2026 schedule included dates in August and September, and Saturday, October 10 is the last one before the series picks back up next spring.
In past years the walk has started at Creek Park around 9 a.m. and ended roughly ninety minutes later at the Historical Museum, where volunteers set out refreshments among the same railroad photographs the tour just spent an hour explaining. No reservation has been required in any prior year, and questions can be sent ahead to the Historical Commission at [email protected].
Standing at the Hub after that walk, waiting for a bus with the museum's coffee still on your breath, it's hard to see the intersection as just a transfer point again. It's the same fork in the ground the trains found in 1874, doing the same job it has done for a hundred and fifty years, under a name the town gave it almost by accident.
The McArthur Love Team works out of Larkspur and spends plenty of Saturday mornings walking these same downtown blocks. If you're curious about the history under your own corner of Marin, or just want company on the October 10 walk, we're an easy team to find.
