Old St. Hilary's Landmark is a former mission church

place of worship A place of worship is a specially designed structure or space where individuals or a group of people such as a congregation come to perform acts of devotion, veneration, or religious study. A building constructed or used for this purpose is somet ...

and now a historic landmark owned and maintained by the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society,

Tiburon Peninsula The Tiburon Peninsula (french: Péninsule de Tiburon), or The Xaragua Peninsula, simply "the Tiburon" (''le Tiburon''), is a region of Haiti encompassing most of Haiti's southern coast. It starts roughly at the southernmost point of the Haiti-D ...

Marin County, California Marin County is a County (United States), county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and ...

, United States. The landmark is situated on the flank of the Tiburon Hills, an area characterized by

serpentine soil Serpentine soil is an uncommon soil type produced by weathered ultramafic rock such as peridotite and its metamorphic derivatives such as serpentinite. More precisely, serpentine soil contains minerals of the serpentine subgroup, especially anti ...

s and hence has a distinct

plant community A plant community is a collection or association of plant species within a designated geographical unit, which forms a relatively uniform patch, distinguishable from neighboring patches of different vegetation types. The components of each plant co ...

. The area surrounding the church is a

Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...

protected area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural, ecological or cultural values. There are several kinds of protected areas, which vary by level of protection depending on the ena ...

, the Old Saint Hilary's Open Space Preserve. The church building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2020. An endangered wildflower species, ''

Streptanthus niger ''Streptanthus niger'' is an endangered species within the family Brassicaceae. Like other genus members, this herb has wavy petal margins with perimeter calluses that discourage larval herbivory. This plant is endemic to the Tiburon Peninsul ...

'', commonly called the Tiburon jewelflower, grows near the church.

Line notes

References

Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks SocietyMarin County Parks
Churches in Marin County, California Protected areas of Marin County, California Tiburon, California Religion in the San Francisco Bay Area National Register of Historic Places in Marin County, California Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in California Roman Catholic churches completed in 1888 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United States {{California-church-stub