Miller Knox Regional Shoreline houses the Golden State Model Railroad Museum where you can watch 5 working model trains in action and. You can hike the to the 

top of Nicholl Knob in the hills for fabulous views of the bay. Keller Beach provides shoreline access, with a sandy beach. At the southern end, Ferry Point, also an East Bay Regional Park, has a nice walk out to the original pump house building and pier from the old Santa Fe Terminal. This was the western terminus of the Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad, which from 1900, ran ferries, tugs, and barges to San Francisco and China Basin. Santa Fe continued barging freight cars to China Basin well into the 1980s. For a short time in the late 1920’s, the Southern Pacific’s Golden Gate Ferry Terminal was located nearby, just west of Richmond Terminal #1, at the foot of Dorman Drive. Richmond Terminal #1 is visible to the south from the shoreline, and from Ferry Point you can see the bough of the Red Oak Victory, which is being lovingly restored here. The ship is open for tours weekends through the Richmond Museum. Some of the volunteers working to restore the Red Oak Victory are women who helped build the ships.

You can continue around the corner into the Brickyard Cove, home of the Brickyard Cove Marina and the Richmond Yacht Club. It has been built around the kilns and smokestack of the Richmond Pressed Brick Company, the last to close down of Richmond’s local brickyards. Richmond Pressed Brick Company was around at the turn of the century, and supplied brick for the rebuilding of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The brick kilns and smokestack have been preserved by the developers for character. All’s Fair restaurant in the Brickyard Marina offers tasty waterfront meals.

From Point Richmond, you can take surface streets to Western Drive. From the base of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, this 4-mile, paved road leads past some of the area’s more colorful history-an old Chinese shrimp village, a whaling station, and a castle that housed Richmond’s first and only winery, before heading through the Point Molate US Naval Fuel Depot, and out to the San Pablo Yacht Harbor. From here the boat departs to take you to historic East Brother Light Station. Western Drive also delivers great views of the Bay and the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The bridge was completed in 1956, built in part as a result of a series of ferry strikes that badly maimed regional transportation. In addition to carrying traffic, the bridge now houses a colony of nesting cormorants. With up to 300 nests in this group, biologists have scaled the bridge and learn more about cormorant behavior. They contemplate that the cormorants are here, in part, to feed on the humming toadfish that migrate in the bay in the summer months, providing a food source for the cormorants, who, at that time of year, are feeding their young.

Along Western Drive, you will pass Castro Point, site of the Richmond-San Rafael Ferry Terminal from 1915 until Richmond-San Rafael Bridge was opened. Nearby Point Molate Beach Park, is the site of a Chinese Fishing Village that bustled here from the 1860s to 1912. In its heyday, the village consisted of about 30 shacks and several wharves, where shrimp were harvested and either sold locally, and dried and sent to China. Traces of the village have since been reclaimed by the bay. Off shore is Red Rock, also known as Golden Rock in the past, in reference to the legend of treasure hidden here in the days when pirates patrolled the bay. This was also the site of the Red Rock Fishing Resort in days gone by. Back on Western Drive, you soon enter the Naval Depot. A sign directs you to stop at the Visitor Center if you plan to do anything but pass through to the Yacht Harbor. They have historic photographs of the area worth checking out. Nearby is Winehaven. ("Our castle," boasts Mary, lifetime Point Richmond resident and docent at the Richmond History Association museum.) This fabulous brick building indeed maintains the architectural lines of a castle. From 1906 to 1919, Winehaven was one of the world’s largest wineries. Conveniently located near shipping lanes and rail service, grapes were brought here from all over California, and wine made here was shipped all over the world. Winehaven produced over 60 wines, as well as brandy and champagne. In its heyday, it’s ships carried barrels of wine across the bay daily to San Francisco. Prohibition officially halted operations in 1919. The buildings are national historic landmarks, and were used by the Navy fuel depot from 1941 to demilitarization in 1995.

Western Drive continues along the shoreline to Point Orient, where the East Brother Light Station comes into view, then climbs up and over a hill to the San Pablo Yacht Harbor. Overlooking the San Pablo Bay, and isolated from the rest of the world by hills covered with sticky monkey flower and coyote bush, the harbor is delightfully worlds away from modern times. The harbor changed hands recently, which has triggered a remodel of The Galley restaurant here. It will be re-opening soon for harborside meals. This harbor is near the site of a former whaling station, but, the station buildings (to the west of the harbor) have since burned to the waterline. Now stumps in the water there are all that’s left of Point San Pablo’s whaling days. The whaling station here at Point San Pablo was in business from 1956 until 1971, and whales caught in the Pacific were brought here for processing. San Francisco was, by the late 1800s, the world’s largest whaling port, but the whaling industry collapsed when petroleum replaced whale oil, and steel replaced whale bone. Whaling everywhere ended when the fishery was closed down by the federal government’s ban on commercial whaling in 1971. There was also a small sardine port and processing point near the tip of Point San Pablo during the 1940s which thrived until that fishery collapsed. You can still try your hand at fishing with one of the sportfishing outfits out of Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor.

If you are continuing on to the East Brother Light Station, you can see the remains of the whaling station from the boat, the last whaling station on the west coast. The boat delivers you to a 5-foot ladder which you must negotiate from the bobbing boat to the island. Upon your successful completion of the journey, you will be pampered at the inn by the exquisite accommodations and gourmet food offered at the 1878 lighthouse. Or, if you’ve just come for the day, you can bring a picnic, have a lighthouse tour, and relax for the afternoon. The lighthouse was manned by Lighthouse Services personnel until it was automated in 1969. It was decommissioned and restored by local preservationists in 1980.

If you’d like to see more of San Pablo Bay, you can take AC Transit, or the bike surface streets to Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, which is, with over 2,000 acres, one of the bigger East Bay Regional Parks. Here you can hike 11 miles of trails, watch for colonies of monarch butterflies who migrate here to flock the eucalyptus trees, or take the shuttle to the pier which juts over 1,200 feet out into San Pablo Bay. From the pier, you can appreciate this large open shoreline, a breath of fresh air in the lair of the East Bay’s oil refineries. Like most of the bayshore, this little peninsula has an interesting past. The Giant Powder Company moved here in 1892 and set up the company town of Giant, along with its plant to produce explosives used throughout the world in major earth moving efforts. Since 1960, when the company left, the company town became part of a residential development, and mother nature has taken over the rest. All that remains are some in-cognito, blast-protecting concrete bunkers.

Though I hope Point Pinole, the shoreline along Western Drive, and the enclave of Point Richmond don’t change much at all, because they are charming the way they are, Richmond’s southern waterfront is very much emerging. As the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park takes shape alongside the ever developing Bay Trail, coupled with the restoration of ferry service, the Richmond waterfront will draw increasing attention to the natural and cultural attributes of this hard working town. And well deserved attention it will be. Richmond’s waterfront setting is beautiful, and Richmond’s role in the wartime shipyards is a fascinating story worthy of the national interest it has begun to receive. Enjoy your visit to Richmond.