In Tomales, the Saloon Sat Empty for Two Years. The Town Hall Never Missed a Beat.

Highway One slows to a walking pace through Tomales, past a row of buildings old enough to have outlived the businesses that built them. On a recent afternoon the porch of the William Tell House sat empty, its mahogany bar dark behind glass, a commercial listing rather than a dinner reservation the only way in. A few blocks north, past the Tomales Regional History Center, the Town Hall's lights were on for a Thursday-night event, the kind that has been happening in that same building since long before anyone standing in the room was born.

That contrast is the actual story of Tomales right now. The town's two most visible commercial addresses are either vacant or gone. Its oldest civic building has not paused.

What's Actually Dark on Highway One

The William Tell House has been Tomales's anchor since 1877, when it opened as a saloon under Swiss ownership. It survived the Great Tomales Fire of 1920, which leveled the original structure along with several neighboring buildings, and was rebuilt by owners Antonio and Maria Matteri in 1921 into the building that still stands. The Matteri family ran it for three generations, through Maria's daughter Edith Bonini and then her son Bill Bonini Sr., before selling outside the family in 1989. It changed hands again in 1996 and in 2011.

In 2018, San Francisco restaurateur Ted Wilson, known for The Hall and Fine & Rare, bought the property and closed it for a renovation that brought in chef Austin Perkins of Nick's Cove and Cyrus, along with beverage consultant Ethan Terry of Alembic and 15 Romolo. It reopened in the summer of 2019 and made it through the pandemic years that closed so many small restaurants along this stretch of coast.

Then, in February 2024, the Press Democrat reported that the ownership group had put the whole operation up for sale, citing "different goals" among the partners, with an asking price of $2.65 million covering the building and business licenses. Two and a half years later, the ask has come down to $2.295 million and the space is still listed as available. A building that outlasted a fire, a family dynasty, and three separate changes of ownership since 1989 has now gone longer without a working kitchen than at almost any point in its post-fire history.

A few doors down, the town lost something smaller but more personal. Carlos Ramirez had worked at the Tomales Deli and Café for twenty years and owned it for more than a decade when he and his wife Esmerelda closed the doors in February 2025. The Point Reyes Light covered the closing, noting that the couple pointed to inflation, competition, and their own insistence on keeping prices low as the reasons they couldn't continue. The deli had been the town's one true budget lunch option, the place Tomales High seniors went on their off-campus lunch privileges, at a moment when a slice of pizza elsewhere in town runs $12 and a taco plate can hit $20.

"I told everybody that I'll be back, because I'm part of Tomales."

That was Esmerelda Ramirez's line to the paper on her way out the door. Whether the promise holds, the deli's chairs are empty for now.

The Hands Holding the Buildings

Here's what connects these two stories in a way that isn't obvious from Highway One. The deli didn't just close in any building. It shared the historic Piezzi structure, built in 1919 as Tomales's second auto repair shop, with Route One Bakery and Kitchen. That building is owned by Tamara Hicks and David Jablons, the couple behind Toluma Farms and Tomales Farmstead Creamery, who bought it for $1.7 million from a local contractor who had held it for sixteen years. Part of the appeal, Hicks told the Light, was that the property came with a house where their head cheesemaker lived.

When the deli closed, even the building's owner didn't have a ready answer for what comes next. Hicks said she didn't yet know who the next tenant would be, though she didn't rule out letting Route One Bakery expand into the vacated space. Route One itself is owned by Shannon Gregory, who also runs the well-known Marshall Store and its takeout counter Out the Door down the road on Tomales Bay. It opened in the Piezzi Building in 2020 and has been the town's steady daytime gathering spot since, serving coffee, pastries, wood-fired pizza, and local beer and cider, closed midweek but reliably open the rest of the week.

What this shows is a town where a small handful of families and operators hold most of the working real estate. When one piece pauses, whether it's a saloon changing hands or a deli's lease running out, the ripple runs through people who are already stretched across several roles at once. That is a fragile way to keep a commercial strip alive. It is also, as it turns out, not the thing actually keeping Tomales together.

What Never Stopped

The Tomales Town Hall was built by early settlers in 1874, three years before the Tell House opened its doors, and it has never closed for a renovation that lasted more than a season. It got its current facade during a 1931 remodel and is now several years into a fundraising push its volunteer board calls the Rejuvenation campaign, timed to the building's 150th anniversary. Nobody has ever needed a chef or a liquor license transfer to keep it running. It just needs the people who already show up.

Two fixtures never move, whatever else is happening on Highway One:

• Every Thursday, 2:00 to 2:45 p.m.: a free food pantry, no identification required
• Second Thursday of the month: open mic night, sign-ups at 6:30 p.m., music starting at 7

Around those standing dates, the Hall built out a full season of ticketed nights earlier this year. On February 21, it hosted a Parisian jazz-club dinner dance, with coq au vin, braised pork belly, or a vegetarian option on the menu, tickets running $25 to $75. On April 18 and again on April 26, it hosted Cabaret Nights with Cathie Poncia, dinner catered by Valley Ford Creamery, tickets $25 to $50. None of that programming waited on whether the Tell House found a buyer or what eventually filled the deli's old storefront. The Hall answers to its own board of trustees, community members who serve after attending two consecutive meetings, and its programming has continued through fires, ownership changes, and a pandemic that shuttered the saloon three doors down for the better part of a year. It seats 150 upstairs and 60 in the room below, and it serves not just Tomales but four neighboring villages along the same stretch of Highway One: Marshall, Dillon Beach, Fallon, and Valley Ford across the county line in Sonoma.

The Other Recurring Date

There's a second fixture on the calendar that runs on its own schedule, separate from any restaurant's hours. On the first Sunday of every month, from 1 to 3 p.m., Toluma Farms opens its gates for a public tour of the goat and sheep dairy that Hicks and Jablons started after buying 160 acres in 2003. They began milking 200 goats in 2007, added sheep in 2011, and opened the creamery that gives the operation its Tomales Farmstead Creamery name a year or so later. The cheeses carry Coast Miwok names, a nod to the people who worked this land long before it was a dairy. The land itself sits under an agricultural conservation easement held by the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which means the pastures the goats graze will stay pastures.

Visitors who want more than an afternoon can book the on-site farmstay. It is a small, recurring ritual that doesn't ask whether the William Tell House has found a buyer this month, or whether the vacant retail space in the Piezzi Building has a new tenant yet. It just happens, the first Sunday, whether or not anyone is watching Highway One's for-sale signs.

The Actual Rhythm

None of this means Tomales's restaurant scene doesn't matter. A working saloon and a budget lunch counter are real losses, and anyone who has driven Highway One on a Friday knows how much a town's mood depends on whether the lights are on at the places built for gathering. But the assumption that a shuttered saloon and a closed deli mean the town's social life has gone quiet gets the story backward. The businesses have always been the more fragile layer. The Town Hall, run by volunteers and funded a ticket at a time, has been the actual constant since 1874, through fires and family successions and a listing that's now stretched past two years without a buyer.

For anyone who already calls this stretch of West Marin home, that's the useful thing to know walking into fall: check the Hall's calendar before you assume there's nothing happening in Tomales this week.

For those thinking further ahead, about what it actually means to put down roots in a town built this way, B.G. Bates has spent decades reading West Marin's small towns the way locals do, one storefront and one volunteer board at a time. Begin your West Marin story and connect with B.G. Bates.