Marin County Supes Back ‘Co-Naming’ Drake Boulevard

MARIN COUNTY, CA — The Marin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday backed two options to rename Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in the county’s unincorporated areas.

The board in 4-1 voted to add an additional name to the roadway named after the 16th Century explorer with ties to slave trading among other atrocities.

The push to rename Sir Francis Drake Boulevard emerged from the racial justice reckoning amid the Black Lives Matter movement that swelled in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing in police custody last summer.

Drake launched his maritime career in the slave trade in the 1560's and played a key role in England's slave trafficking industry according to History.com.

English scholar Claire Jowitt alleges Drake was also a murderer, HistoryExtra reports.

The town of Fairfax on March 3 became Marin County's first municipality to back the renaming of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard.

Larkspur and Ross voted against the name change.

Supervisors Dennis Rodoni and Katie Rice, who represent the unincorporated areas through which the boulevard runs, proposed to take both co-naming options back to a working group that has been exploring the renaming issue since last summer.

Both favor one consistent name through the five municipal jurisdictions bisected by the boulevard: Larkspur, Ross, San Anselmo, Fairfax, and the county.

“The reason I want some flexibility is that one my initial goals with the working group was to work with the cities and town and see if we could come up with one name continuously,” Rodoni said.

“That’s the whole reason we formed the working group, in my mind – to achieve some consensus so it doesn’t have different names in different jurisdictions. It will take some work.”

Supervisor Damon Connolly, who supports ditching the slave trader’s name from the roadway that cuts across central Marin from the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, cast the lone dissenting vote Tuesday.

“At the hearing I expressed my support of legally renaming Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in a way that would acknowledge and recognize Marin’s indigenous people,” Connolly said in an email to Patch.

“I was not able to garner support for a vote on legally renaming Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. I do not favor a purely ceremonial approach.”