The Rose Bowl Apartments at 461 Cane Street in Larkspur stand on the site of an outdoor dance floor that, for fifty summers, paid for the town's fire department. The dances began in 1910 as a fundraiser during Booster Days, held on a temporary platform to buy fire equipment for a volunteer company that had none. By 1913 the crowds justified a permanent home, and the firemen bought half an acre of redwood grove on Cane Street and fenced it in roses, which is where the name came from. Dancers came by ferry and electric train from San Francisco and from all over Marin, paid fifty cents at the gate, and danced under strings of lights and paper lanterns to bands led by Ernie Heckscher and Ray Hackett. In the 1930s a single night could draw 4,000 dancers. The money was real. The dances brought in about 75,000 dollars a year, and the Larkspur volunteers spent it on their first motorised engine, a Model T chemical wagon bought in 1916, then on a water system, hydrants, an alarm system and a fire station. The last dance in the grove was held in 1963, after which the land was sold and the apartments went up in 1969 beside the old railroad right of way, which is now a paved path. Larkspur revived the Rose Bowl dance for its centennial in 2008, again in 2012, and in 2024 at the old Escalle winery a few blocks away.
Getting there
37.9349, -122.5345
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