Under towering redwoods and bay laurels, Kourtney Boone sits in a small wood cabin brimming with puppets, fake scat and Samuel P. Taylor State Park history. The walls inside this cozy multipurpose space are covered with sepia-toned photos and fauna life cycle charts. Boone, an interpreter with the Marin County park, is surrounded by brochures that need to be updated, with archival binders and highlighted timelines to aid in the task.

But her mind is stuck on one thing: eggs.

One passage about the park’s founder in the brochure has been tormenting her for years: “Upon arrival in 1849, 22-year-old Samuel found a wooden cask filled with eggs floating near shore. He cooked the eggs and set up a food stand on the beach. Food sales proved profitable.”

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That cask reportedly launched Samuel P. Taylor’s first successful business. It also may have led to the creation of Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Founded in 1945, the nearly 2,900-acre redwood preserve in Marin County now welcomes more than 130,000 annual visitors.

Yet Boone isn’t satisfied with folklore. She wants to know if it actually happened. And if it did, where did the eggs come from?

Don't let Google decide who you trust.

Like Boone, the mystery surrounding the eggs has been plaguing me for some time. In August 2022, I camped at Samuel P. Taylor with a group of friends and read the park brochure aloud as we set up our tents. When I got to the part with the floating cask, my friends stopped me — they assumed I had made it up.

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Years later, I called the park looking for an answer, and I eventually got in touch with Boone. 

The park host office at Samuel P. Taylor State Park.

A hogshead in San Francisco

Taylor’s story originates from an unpublished manuscript of Marin County pioneers written by Bertha Stedman Rothwell. Stedman Rothwell’s mother, Bertha Stedman, was born in Lagunitas in 1880 and lived on the Taylor family property well before it was a state park. Her father worked for Taylor and helped build a number of structures on the land. She overlapped with Taylor for six years, said Boone. 

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Samuel Penfield Taylor was born on Oct. 9, 1827, in Saugerties, New York, according to the manuscript. In 1849, he sailed to California during the Gold Rush, enduring a grueling 10-month voyage around Cape Horn before arriving in San Francisco in early 1850. According to Stedman Rothwell’s account, he landed at Clay and Montgomery streets. Back then, the intersection was located on the city’s muddy shoreline. Today, it’s at the foot of the Transamerica Pyramid.

The prospect of gold resulted in many ships being abandoned offshore, as crews dropped anchor and ran off to the fields hoping to strike it rich. That’s exactly what happened to Taylor. His crewmates deserted the ship almost immediately, leaving him alone to watch over the schooner, said Stedman Rothwell’s manuscript. 

Vacationers at their campsite in Taylorville, Marin County, 1889.

FILE: The Scott family of Sonoma County has a picnic at Samuel P. Taylor State Park in Lagunitas, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 27, 2015.

This proved to be a pivotal moment.

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“One day he saw a hogshead floating by his vessel,” wrote Stedman Rothwell. A hogshead isn’t a simple cask but a large barrel — often seen in pirate movies — used for transporting goods. “He proceeded to fish it out of the water, and was surprised to find it filled with eggs.”

With the newfound goods, Taylor quickly improvised a business. Using the hogshead as a base, he set up a makeshift food stand and began selling bacon and eggs to hungry miners on the beach on Clay Street. Demand for food was enormous, and “he soon found himself engulfed in a fine paying business,” according to the manuscript.

For Boone, the physical setting of the story is surprisingly believable. The geography checks out. But the origin of the eggs proved more difficult to find.

To understand the mystery, Boone had to zoom out. In 1848, during the Gold Rush, San Francisco’s population exploded from about a thousand to over 25,000 in about a year. Food shortages were common, and protein was especially scarce, making eggs a luxury commodity: A single egg could fetch up to $3. “If we account for inflation, the miners paid something astounding—​more like $427 to $1,282 per dozen,” writes author Lizzie Stark in her book, “Egg: A Dozen Overtures.”

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FILE: Common murre eggs being sold at the Kolaportid flea market in Iceland, May 1, 2012.

Desperate times led to a strange and troubling solution. About 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco, the Farallon Islands, with their enormous seabird colonies, became a target. Of all the bird species on the islands, common murres ended up being the unluckiest victims.

Murre eggs are large and distinctive. Greenish-blue and covered in black squiggles, they’re nearly twice the size of a chicken egg, with “a bright red yolk and a white that stays translucent when cooked,” writes Stark. They have a bizarre downside: If the eggs aren’t consumed immediately, they have an “old fish” aftertaste. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs soon began harvesting them. One of the earliest was David G. “Doc” Robinson, a pharmacist from Maine, who scaled the jagged and “slippery, excrement-​covered cliffs” of the islands called the Devil’s Teeth by old mariners.

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It wasn’t just the egg collecting that was treacherous — so were the voyages. Rough seas often destroyed the cargo, and according to several historical accounts, Robinson lost about half of his shipment on the way back to San Francisco Bay during one trip. Even so, the surviving eggs earned him about $3,000 — a small fortune at the time. 

For Boone, the overlap is impossible to ignore. Same years. Same egg mania.

The theory raises a new series of questions. Could Robinson’s lost cargo have drifted that far? How many eggs would a hogshead hold? Would saltwater ruin them? Were they murre eggs?

A common murre aside an egg, Shetland Islands, Scotland, Feb. 27, 2008.

The murre trade would eventually turn violent. By the late 1800s, rival egging companies fought armed battles on the Farallon Islands during what historians now call the Egg Wars. Murre populations collapsed and suffered until the islands were eventually protected. Even today, the birds are still recovering. This adds an irony Boone can’t quite shake: A protected redwood park may trace its origin story to the exploitation of seabirds.

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Following the fortune

Taylor didn’t stay in the egg business, but the early windfall may have helped him establish himself in California. After going to the gold fields and establishing a lumber yard in San Francisco, he set his sights on Marin County. According to Marin Magazine, he purchased 100 acres of land where Samuel P. Taylor State Park is today and built the Pioneer Paper Mill in 1856 — the first paper mill on the West Coast. The mill produced newsprint for several San Francisco newspapers and helped anchor a small industrial town called Taylorville. As railroads expanded through Marin in the late 19th century, the valley began attracting visitors from San Francisco. Taylor capitalized on that, too.

The hotel at Camp Taylor in Marin County, 1909.

He built Camp Taylor, a resort where travelers could fish, picnic and escape the city and relax in the serenity that the redwoods offer. Taylor’s legacy wasn’t purely pastoral. His company dammed streams to power the mill, blocking fish runs. He was also accused of dumping chemicals into the water, Marin Magazine reported. Still, the industry he built transformed the valley; decades later, much of that land became Samuel P. Taylor State Park.  

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The maps suggest it’s possible. The timeline seems to work, but the proof still isn’t complete. The final evidence may be hiding somewhere — in another forgotten manuscript, in the archives of a maritime society or in a ledger no one has thought to open yet.

Back in her cabin office, Boone flips through the documents laid out in front of her. She has made peace with the ambiguity, mostly. The mystery has pulled her into Gold Rush economics, seabird ecology and the early chaotic days of San Francisco.

The morning sun shines through tall redwood trees that nearly hide a campsite from view in California’s Samuel P. Taylor Sate Park.

“The timeline seems to fit well enough to presume that this is likely a very true story,” she said. “Which, honestly, in the end, raises way more questions for me than anything else.”

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She flipped through the brochures and laughed.

“Samuel P. Taylor State Park,” she said, “was hatched in San Francisco.”

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