Griffin waged his early battles in Marin County, where he raised four girls with his first wife, Mary “Mimi” Griffin-Jones, a pediatrician. He contributed to the creation of several local medical facilities and eventually served as chief of medicine at both Marin General and Ross hospitals. He later spent 15 years as public health director at what was then the Sonoma State Hospital for developmental disorders and was appointed chief of the hepatitis B and, later, AIDS Task Force for 11 state hospitals.
He first became enmeshed in conservation amid plans to build up to 2,000 homes on tidelands along the Tiburon Peninsula in Richardson Bay. Earth for the 800-acre Reeds Port Project was to have come from bulldozing nearby Ring Mountain to fill in the tidal area, fashion canals and build homes and a marina―until Griffin and leaders in the Marin Audubon Society successfully intervened.
The region had large tracts of undeveloped land fronting the ocean and waterways ripe for investment. That inspired visions of waterfront communities served by a parkway running coastward from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and a four-lane north-south highway from the Marin Headlands up into the Sonoma Coast.
One by one, Griffin and a growing band of allies stymied plans for large housing and commercial development proposal in the Bolinas Lagoon, Tomales Bay and the Marin Headlands, shrewdly working political connections and quietly acquiring and permanently protecting key parcels without which targeted projects couldn’t go forward―some times at substantial financial risk.
Development in west Marin County was to be facilitated by a parkway crossing from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to the coast, a four-lane highway from the Marin Headlands running up the Sonoma Coast, and an aqueduct running inland from the central corridor to carry Russian River water to new communities proposed on coastal lands.
Griffin challenged them all, winning election in 1973 to the Marin Municipal Water District to help defeat the aqueduct and gaining, in the process, greater appreciation of the demands on the Russian River and, farther north, the Eel River, which helps feed it.
His acquisition in 1960 of a Westside Road ranch just west of the Russian River with three towering hop-drying kilns later restored, offered exposure to the effects of gravel mining in the river’s middle reaches, and incited a new round of activism.
He and his wife, Joyce, opened Hop Kiln Winery in 1973 and hosted huge parties at their home there that often drew members of the environmental community, allowing cross-pollination between advocates and local farmers.
It also positioned them to battle gravel mining in the river’s middle reaches, where they ultimately gifted a 44-acre conservation easement to the Sonoma Land Trust to help protect the area.
Griffin and the Friends of the Russian River, later Russian Riverkeeper, took the gravel companies to court. They cited reduced water levels and quality; habitat losses for endangered fish; and other direct impacts from decades of digging into the river bed, which altered its shape and invited invasive species in. Ultimately, new environmental conditions imposed on gravel mining made it so expensive and difficult that gravel companies pursued other paths, McEnhill said.
“The tradition of the good old boys in Sonoma County to keep harvesting money from nature at the cost of such a beautiful place was something that ran into a brick wall when it hit Marty Griffin,” said Charter. “It was just something he was not going to allow to happen.”
Other campaigns to defeat development―described in colorful detail in Griffin’s 1998 book “Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast,” downloadable here―similarly resulted in protected lands.
The Marin Audubon Society ultimately set up headquarters on Richardson Bay, overlooking a 900-acre subtidal wildlife sanctuary that hosts dozens of bird species where the Reeds Port project might otherwise have stood.
The battle for Bolinas Lagoon resulted in additional county park land and preservation of the 1,000-acre Audubon Canyon Ranch, renamed in 2010 the Martin Griffin Preserve, which included the prized egret and great blue heron rookery he had visited as a youngster.
Audubon Canyon Ranch, also the name of a nonprofit environmental and educational organization of which Griffin is a founder, also acquired 400 acres of protected lands along the shore of Tomales Bay, including its Cypress Grove Research Center near Marshall. The organization would later acquire the more than 500-acre Bouverie Preserve in the Sonoma Valley and the 3,125-acre Modini Preserve near Healdsburg.
Much of the land thus protected formed the “gateway” to the 111-square-mile Point Reyes National Seashore ―created in 1962―and the sprawling, 118-square-mile Golden Gate National Recreation Area that runs from the Golden Gate Bridge to Point Reyes Station.
“He was extraordinarily impactful,” said Dennis Rosatti, former longtime executive director of Sonoma County Conservation Action who credited his own career to a meetup with Griffin at a Hop Kiln party.
“Can you imagine what this coast would look like without these people standing up and saying, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea?’ ”
Griffin is survived by his wife, Joyce Griffin, of Belvedere; daughters Linda Henke, of Salinas; Anne Oliver, of Aptos, Carol Griffin, of Terra Linda, and Joanie Griffin, of Novato; stepson Brian Nielsen, of Santa Rosa; and five grandchildren. He is predeceased by one granddaughter, Gina Marin Monaco, who died in 1998 at age 15.
The family is planning a private gathering on his birthday to honor his life. A public celebration is in the works for the fall, but details have not been set.
You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan (she/her) at 707-521-5249 or [email protected]. On X (Twitter) @MaryCallahanB.