[3] Marin City was developed for housing starting in 1942, to accommodate wartime shipyard workers and other migrants to California.

After World War II, the area became predominantly African-American, as white residents were able to move freely to private housing elsewhere in Marin County.

In 2018, Marin City's socioeconomic and racial makeup (median household income of $40,000, and almost 40 percent Black) contrasts with the mostly wealthy and White population in Marin County overall (greater than $80,000 median income, less than four percent Black).

[7][8] Prior to World War II, this area was occupied by a dairy farm and a handful of families.

Soon after war was declared on December 8, 1941, Marin City was rapidly built during 1942 in order to house 6,000 of the 20,000 workers who migrated from all over the United States, attracted by the defense jobs at Marinship, the Sausalito waterfront shipyard.

A total of 93 liberty ships and tankers were built and launched from Marinship in fewer than three years.

[9] Many of the African-American shipyard laborers who had migrated to the Bay Area from the South during the second phase of the Great Migration continued to live in Marin City after the war, either by choice or because many black families were restricted by local zoning from living in or buying homes in the towns surrounding Marin City.

By the 1970s, African Americans comprised more than 75 percent of the population of Marin City, most of whom were descendants of the Marinship workers.

[9] The commercial area was expanded, particularly with the construction of the Gateway Shopping Center in 1996, which displaced a locally renowned flea market.

[11] Chartered in 1958, the MCCSD is responsible for providing services in the areas of parks and recreation, street lighting, recycling and refuse removal.

According to the Marin County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), the District has a total area of 0.9 square miles (2.3 km2).

There were 1,309 housing units at an average density of 2,438.8 per square mile (941.6/km2), of which 30.7% were owner-occupied and 69.3% were occupied by renters.

Several parents outside of the county also found that Willow Creek was a good fit for their children, most of them being from Fairfield and Vallejo.

Once famous for the Marin City Flea Market which was forcibly closed in the mid-1990s, despite community protest, to make way for the Gateway Shopping Center, the MCCSD had planned to launch the smaller-scale Marin City Market Fest on selected Saturdays in the summer of 2006.