Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Nicasio, CA

Nicasio is an unincorporated village and census-designated place near the geographic center of Marin County, about 8 miles west-southwest of Novato, and it carries the nickname 'The Town that Time Forgot.'

The village grew around a town square laid out in the 1860s, when locals hoped Nicasio would become the Marin County seat - a fight the state Legislature finally settled in San Rafael's favor in 1872.

Nicasio's town center still holds St. Mary's Catholic Church, established in 1867, a Druids Hall, a general store, a post office, and the Rancho Nicasio bar and restaurant, a well-known live-music roadhouse.

The 22-room Hotel Nicasio, which opened in 1867, stood on the square until it burned down in December 1940; the Rancho Nicasio restaurant later rose in its place.

Just north of town stands a red one-room schoolhouse that opened in 1871 and is now a listed historical landmark, next to the modern campus of the tiny Nicasio School District.

The 2020 census counted only 81 residents in the Nicasio CDP, down from 96 in 2010, living in just 30 households with an average size of 2.70 people.

Despite its tiny population, Nicasio has the highest per capita income - $211,993 - of any census-designated place in California, and a 2004 Forbes survey ranked its ZIP Code 94946 the 23rd most expensive in the United States.

The most significant non-farm business in Nicasio is George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch, the Lucasfilm production campus hidden in the hills along Lucas Valley Road - a road actually named for 19th-century rancher John Lucas, not the filmmaker.

Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia lived in Nicasio from late 1992 until his death in 1995, and Pearl Jam recorded their 1993 song 'Daughter' there.

The wider Nicasio Valley remains working ranchland of beef and dairy cattle, organic farms and a few small vineyards spread across about 250 homes on roughly 350 parcels, anchored by the man-made Nicasio Reservoir.