The Raccoon Strait is a waterway

Waterway

A waterway is any navigable body of water. Waterways can include rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, and canals. In order for a waterway to be navigable, it must meet several criteria:...

 of the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

 between Angel Island and the Tiburon Peninsula

Tiburon Peninsula

The Tiburon Peninsula , or simply "the Tiburon", is a region of Haiti encompassing all of Haiti's southern coast. It starts roughly at the southernmost of the Haiti-Dominican Republic border and extends westward near Cuba, forming a large headland. Four of Haiti's ten departments are located...

, mainland Marin County, California

Marin County, California

Marin County is a county located in the North San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. As of 2010, the population was 252,409. The county seat is San Rafael and the largest employer is the county government. Marin County is well...

.

History

From Angel Island California State Park in San Francisco Bay. Ref. California State Parks Angel Island.

In 1814, the British 26-gun sloop of war, the H.M.S. Raccoon

HMS Racoon (1808)

HMS Racoon, sometimes spelled HMS Raccoon, was an 18-gun ship sloop of the Cormorant Class of the Royal Navy. She was built by John Preston, of Great Yarmouth, and launched on 30 March 1808.-Service:...

, was damaged off the coast of Oregon, but stayed afloat to reach San Francisco Bay. From March 13 to 19th, the ship was repaired on the beach at Ayala Cove on the Northern portion of Angel Island, at the location of the present day ferry boat dock. This event gave the name to the deep-water channel between Tiburon and Angel Island. It is unclear whether the ship was engaged in the War of 1812 or, more likely, protecting British and Canadian fur traders.

Geography and Natural history

The Spanish, the first European power to control the area, established the village of Tiburon

Tiburon

Tiburon may refer to:Places* Tiburon, California* Tiburón Golf Club Naples, Florida* Tiburón Island, an island in the Gulf of California* Tiburon Peninsula, a peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area of California...

 on the north side of the body of water and showed the straits on their charts as the Straits of Tiburon. Tiburon is the Spanish word for shark

Shark

Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

, named for the subspecies of leopard shark

Leopard shark

The leopard shark is a species of houndshark, family Triakidae, found along the Pacific coast of North America from the U.S. state of Oregon to Mazatlán in Mexico...

 native to San Francisco Bay.

The mainland of the Tiburon Peninsula is dominated by Ring Mountain, which is endowed with considerable archaeological traces of the early Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

s, who settled the local area. Ring Mountain is also replete with numerous species of native wildflower

Wildflower

A wildflower is a flower that grows wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. Yet "wildflower" meadows of a few mixed species are sold in seed packets. The term "wildflower" has been made vague by commercial seedsmen who are interested in selling more flowers or seeds more...

s. The mainland point of closest distance to the strait is Point Tiburon, off which the water depth is approximately 15 fathoms.