Virtual Guidebook to Marin and the North Bay Counties
China Camp State Park
Marin County California

A century ago small shanty towns of Chinese fishermen dotted the shorelines of California, both the sheltered bayshores and the rugged outer coast. They lived a precarious life, alternately tolerated and persecuted, and eventually all the settlements were abandoned. Here north of San Rafael the state park system has protected one of the best preserved of them, once a village of 500 Cantonese netting and drying shrimp, mostly for export to China.

This park also preserves an excellent stretch of pristine bayshore, both rocky and marshy, and adjacent seasonal wetlands and uplands. Unfortunately China Camp is also known as site of the first notable outbreak of Sudden Oak Death Syndrome (SODS), a fungus infection that threatens to decimate the oak forests of the coast ranges.