Visiting Shinn Park
Shinn Historical Park & Arboretum
See all of the organizations who are here at the park on the new Shinn Park website: Garden Club, House Docents, House Museum, and Bunkhouse group.
Garden and Grounds Tour
You can tour the gardens anytime dawn to 30 minutes past sunset with this new self-paced online walking tour of the four acre park. Garden tours may be arranged with Angie.
House Tours
Shinn House tours are managed by the Mission Peak Heritage Foundation. The house is generally open on the first Wednesday 1-4:00 and third Sunday 1-4. Last tour leaves at 3:00. For large groups please check this contact page.
Where to eat?
If you are coming from out of town, historic Niles is worth a visit. Devout Coffee sells great coffee and pastries. The Nile Cafe is a local hangout for coffee and sandwiches. Bronco Billy's Pizza ,Niles location is a favorite pizza place. A "Slice" is enough for two. The taco truck near the green train car is a favorite. Other places to eat can be found by looking at the lines out the door. The model train museum is in the town square. The Niles Film Museum is often open on weekends.
Where are we? Vallejo Mills? Vallejo's Mill? Centreville? Centerville? Niles?
When the Shinn family came in 1856, there was no railroad and the closest town was Centreville/Centerville. Jose de Jesus Vallejo had built his new mill at the mouth of Alameda Creek. The small village around the mill was known as Vallejo's Mills.
Walk over to the tank house garden, nestled between the tankhouse and the "Big House" and look off into the distance to the hills. See a "Niles" sign on that hill? After the railroad came through, the Niles station gave the town its name of Niles. The Western Pacific line ran through the property around 1910 and the train station here was "Niles."
The identity of our old towns is very strong. People still say they live in Niles, rather than Fremont. Fremont is a pretty young city and was established in 1956.
The Hayward fault runs right through the park from the playground to the bunkhouse.
James and Lucy Shinn ran a successful nursery business between 1872 to 1887. They sold seeds, roses, plants, trees, fruit trees, as well as many exotic plants imported from Chile, Australia, China, Japan, and Eastern US. Some of these trees that were planted in the 1870s are still growing here.
The Shinn family was involved with both local, statewide, and nationwide agricultural, horticultural, and political societies.
Shinn Historical Park and Arboretum has the Shinn's first home (Sim’s Cottage, 1840s), the tankhouse (1875), the Big House (1876), and the bungalow (1910), a barn, bunkhouse, and packing shed.
Shinn's Nurseries is in the middle of this map from Thompson and West 1878 "Official and historical atlas map of Alameda County, California"
The Pandemic Project - the Lucy Shinn Letters
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a Shinn family descendent transcribed letters that Lucy Shinn wrote to her daughter, Millie. These letters are a precious gift, as they provide us with a rare peek into the lives of “middle class folk” in the early days of California statehood. The letters cover mundane topics (rag carpets, dress collars and cuffs, etc.) to more esoteric realms of philosophy and religion. The letters span Millie’s years as an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, between 1874-1880. The Shinn's Nurseries was underway during this time.
As another pandemic project, the letters were scanned in and are now hosted on the California Revealed website. Highlights of the letters are displayed in the museum.