Three streets form the perimeter of our town: Miller Avenue, Camino Alto, and Blithedale Avenue. Blithedale is the longest, narrowest, and the most historic of the three, and serves as the primary entrance to town from Hwy. 101. It was also the original carriage road into town from the rail stop, long before cars were the norm.

In the 1890s, when this first photo was taken, Blithedale, then a dirt road, was known as County Road. The second photo, taken last week, shows Blithedale from a similar location, about two blocks up from the intersection of Blithedale and Camino Alto. 

Blithedale was also the name of the railroad stop near what is now the corner of Lomita and Ashford. Trains going from Sausalito northbound over what is now the bike path would stop at the Blithedale station and passengers bound for the Blithedale Hotel would catch a waiting horse carriage. This route was renamed Alto in 1889, and this was also the year a spur from Almonte sent trains directly to the new town of Mill Valley.

The name Blithedale Avenue came from the Blithedale Hotel, which was located in what is now called Blithedale Canyon. Before 1900, it went by the name Corte Madera Canyon. The hotel was in operation from 1879 through 1912, and took its name from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1852 novel, The Blithedale Romance). Before the road became Blithedale, it had a string of monikers. It was County Road first, then Canyon Road and, for a brief period in the early 1920s, it was called Central Avenue. By the late 1920s, Blithedale Avenue was taken as the given name.