Novato highlight
Northern Marin County community
Novato anchors northern Marin County, home to a pre-Columbian Coast Miwok village that survives today as Olompali State Historic Park, established in 1977.
Olompali, in northern Marin near present-day Novato, was a Coast Miwok settlement that flourished from roughly 500 CE onward. The village may have been the largest Native settlement in Marin County by 1200 CE. When Spanish colonists arrived, the site transformed; a Mexican-era adobe house built in 1776 still stands on the grounds, constructed by the chief of the Olompolli band of the Coast Miwok tribe. It is the oldest surviving structure north of the San Francisco Bay, designated California Historical Landmark #210.
Olompali State Historic Park preserves multiple layers of that history. After Mexico granted land to Camillo Ynitia in 1843, he became the only Native American in Northern California to both confirm and keep a large land grant through the Mexican Cession into the American era. The site later hosted the Battle of Olómpali in June 1846 during the Bear Flag Revolt. The State of California acquired the rancho in 1977 and opened it as a public historic park, where visitors today can see the adobe structures, archaeological sites, and grounds that mark centuries of Miwok life and the region's contested history.
Novato itself sits within that regional context. For families here, history and land connect to present needs: understanding what your household depends on, what obligations you carry, and what would happen if you were not here. That clarity makes life insurance planning matter—a term policy sized to your actual situation offers real protection.