Developers planned a city of 30,000 people in the hills directly across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, with 50 apartment towers, hundreds of homes, a shopping mall and a luxury hotel — the projec

Key Points:

• In the mid-1960s, Marincello was a planned city in Marin County, California, designed to accommodate 30,000 residents with extensive residential, commercial, and industrial developments, but it never materialized.
• Developer Thomas Frouge, backed by Gulf Oil, envisioned a dense, self-contained new town with apartment towers, houses, a shopping mall, and a hotel, but the project faced legal challenges over procedural issues after county approval.
• Lawsuits and rising costs stalled the project, and a 1970 court ruling invalidated the initial approval, leading Marin County supervisors to withdraw support; Frouge died in 1969 before the project could proceed.
• The land was eventually sold to the Nature Conservancy and transferred to the federal government, becoming part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area established in 1972, preserving the area as parkland.
• Today, the former Marincello site is a popular hiking area known as the Marincello Trail, where visitors unknowingly walk along what was intended to be the city’s main street.