Greenbrae

Many of Greenbrae's homes are on those hills, along streets such as Via La Cumbre and Via Belardo. Down on Corte Madera Creek, across the channel from the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, the homes of the Greenbrae Boardwalk line the water. They are reached only on foot, and the Corte Madera Marsh Ecological Reserve lies on their south side.

The creek was once lined with arks and houseboats, close to 400 of them according to a local history the Marin History Museum cites, in a community that stretched from Kentfield and Greenbrae out to the bay. Today they have been moved ashore or are moored at two boardwalks, one of them in Greenbrae across from the ferry terminal. The museum also tells of the Hotel Bon-Air, built in 1901 on the land where MarinHealth Medical Center stands today.

Bon Air Center on Sir Francis Drake has been Greenbrae's place for shopping and dining for more than 70 years, with Mollie Stone's Markets and Gott's Roadside among its tenants. MarinHealth Medical Center, the former Marin General Hospital, is on Bon Air Road. Its Oak Pavilion, a 260,000-square-foot hospital building, opened in 2020.

Across Bon Air Road from the hospital, Hal Brown Park at Creekside sits beside a tidal marsh on Corte Madera Creek. A path follows the creek west from Bon Air Road toward Ross, and another stretch runs from behind Bon Air Center to Larkspur Landing, where bike and walking routes carry on to the ferry and through the Cal Park Hill Tunnel to San Rafael.

Greenbrae is in the Kentfield School District, whose schools are Bacich School and Kent Middle School, and its students go on to Redwood High School in Larkspur, in the Tamalpais Union High School District. Schools go by address, so it is worth confirming a specific home with the district.

Golden Gate Ferry boats leave the Larkspur Ferry Terminal, just across US 101, for San Francisco, and most crossings take about 35 minutes. SMART trains run from Larkspur station, about 0.6 mile from the ferry on foot, north to Windsor in Sonoma County.