Main Street Tiburon

This guide to Main Street in Tiburon traces what lies beneath today's shops and cafes: until the 1890s the street was open water, part of Belvedere Cove, where sea captains, bohemian artists, and railroad workers moored houseboats called arks side by side. You'll hear how the town later drained the cove and built foundations around the hulls already sitting there rather than hauling them away, and about individual arks with their own histories, including one that began life as a ranch shed. Look for the rounded underside of a hull still visible beneath a porch as you walk the block.