Marin Islands

San Rafael Bay is an embayment of San Pablo Bay, located in Marin County and the northern San Francisco Bay Area, California.

San Rafael Creek is a watercourse in Marin County, California, United States that discharges to San Rafael Bay, a small embayment of the San Francisco Bay. The mouth of San Rafael Creek is a channelized estuary through an industrial area. San Rafael Creek has a designation under Federal Law Section 303(d) as impaired by diazinon, the principal pollutant causing impairment designations for streams discharging to San Pablo Bay, which is the northern arm of San Francisco Bay. In September 2007, the organization Save The Bay designated San Rafael Creek as one of the top ten "worst trash hot spot" waterways flowing into the San Francisco Bay. The channel portion of San Rafael Creek below the Grand Street Bridge is dredged on a regular maintenance schedule to keep the shallow draft channel navigable. Dredge spoils are disposed of at a site near Alcatraz Island. Most of the soils in the lower watershed are clays and bay mud, resulting in a low transmissivity of groundwater. Typical vertical soil profiles in the lower watershed are four to five feet of imported fill over 60 to 65 feet (18–20 meters) of bay mud set on a basement of Franciscan Sandstone bedrock. At the mouth of San Rafael Creek, situated on the south bank, is Pickleweed Park, where shorebirds can be seen, particularly in the winter migration season.

San Quentin (Spanish: San Quintín, meaning "St. Quentin") is a small unincorporated community in Marin County, California, United States. It is located west of Point San Quentin, at an elevation of 30 feet (9.1 meters).

The San Rafael Rock Quarry, also commonly known as the McNear Quarry, is a 172 acres (70 ha) granite quarry located east of San Rafael, California. Stone from the quarry has been used in many places, such as for levee maintenance in Novato and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and road improvement in Larkspur and San Francisco.

The Canal Area comprises two neighborhoods of San Rafael, California, designated by the city as the "Canal Waterfront" and the "Canal." The Canal Area is bounded on the east by San Francisco Bay, on the north by the San Rafael Canal and on the south and west by Highways 101 and I-580 and by San Quentin Ridge. Land use is split almost evenly between residential and non-residential (commercial/industrial) uses. The Canal Area provides a substantial portion of the low-income housing in Marin County, one of the most affluent counties in the United States, along with Marin City. It is also the location of transportation and waste management facilities serving Marin County and the North Bay.

San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County. Established in 1852, and opening in 1854, San Quentin is the oldest prison in California. The state's only death row for male inmates, the largest in the United States, is located at the prison. It has a gas chamber, but since 1996, executions at the prison have been carried out by lethal injection, though the prison has not performed an execution since 2006. The prison has been featured on film, radio drama, video, podcast, and television; is the subject of many books; has hosted concerts; and has housed many notorious inmates.

McNears Beach was the site of a fashionable beach resort established in the 1880s on San Pablo Bay in Marin County, California. It was located 0.5 miles (0.8 km) north-northwest of Point San Pedro, and 3.4 miles (5.4 km) northeast of San Rafael. The United States Board of Geographic Names rejected other, similar names proposed for the site, including McNear, McNear Landing, and McNear's Beach.

Simms Island is a former marsh island in San Francisco Bay. It is in Marin County, California; Its coordinates are 37°57′33″N 122°30′18″W, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) gave its elevation as 13 ft (4.0 m) in 1981. It appears as an island on a USGS map in 1897; it is labeled in a 1954 map, but fully connected to the mainland.

East Brother Island Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on East Brother Island in San Rafael Bay, near the tip of Point San Pablo in Richmond, California. It marks the entrance to San Pablo Bay from San Francisco Bay. Built in 1874 and automated in 1969, the lighthouse was designed in the American Stick style by Paul J. Pelz, who also designed East Brother Island's sister stations, Point Fermin Light in San Pedro CA, Mare Island Light, in Carquinez Strait, California (demolished in the 1930s), Point Hueneme Light in California (replaced in 1940), Hereford Inlet Light in North Wildwood, New Jersey, and Point Adams Light in Washington State (burned down by the Lighthouse Service in 1912), all in essentially the same style. The former keeper's house began operating as a bed and breakfast in 1980.

The Sisters are two small rock islands in San Pablo Bay, located 500 meters (1,600 ft) northeast of Point San Pedro in Marin County, California. The Sisters were shown in an 1850 survey map of the San Francisco Bay area made by Cadwalader Ringgold. They, along with The Brothers on the opposite side of the San Pablo Strait, were reserved for military purposes by order of President Andrew Johnson in 1867. After many a court battle the plans were scrapped.

China Camp State Park is a state park in Marin County, California, surrounding a historic Chinese American shrimp-fishing village and a salt marsh. The park is located in San Rafael, California, on the shore of San Pablo Bay. It is known for its hiking and mountain biking trails, scenic views, and open spaces. The 1,514-acre (613 ha) park was established in 1976. A 75-acre (30 ha) district, including the shrimping village and a prehistoric shell midden, were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 for having state-level significance in archaeology, architecture, commerce, settlement, and social history. China Camp State Park, along with the Rush Ranch Open Space Preserve, is part of the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.

The Brothers are a pair of small islands, East Brother and West Brother, located in the San Rafael Bay embayment of San Pablo Bay, these roughly 1,000 feet (300 m) west of Point San Pablo in Contra Costa County, California.