Celebrations and Events Related to the Juan Bautista de Anza Expedition

Californio descendants

You are invited to the Peralta Adobe in Downtown San Jose, California and the Presidio of San Francisco

For dates, see the calendar at:
Los Californianos
and History San Jose
and the Presidio of San Francisco

Peralta Adobe with new outdoor oven at right
See a map and directions. (The Fallon house is across the street from the adobe.)

What it's all about

Ceremonies will commemorate the founding of San José on November 29th 1777 and the Founding of the Presidio of San Francisco on June 27, 1776.

Background and history

Near what is today the airport, a gathering of 15 men and 51 women and children started a settlement that they called El Pueblo San José de Guadalupe, the first purely civilian non- American Indian settlement in California. San José was thus founded on Nov. 29, 1777.

The settlers, with their families, set out from the Presidio of San Francisco on the seventh day of November, 1777, accompanied by the lieutenant of the 1775-1776 Juan Bautista de Anza expedition, Josef Joaquin Moraga. In the Spring of 1776, Anza, Padre Pedro Font, Lt. Moraga, and a small group of Spanish soldiers had explored the area north of Monterey, including Santa Clara County, on their way to choose the sites for the Mission and Presidio in San Francisco. Lt. Moraga came through Santa Clara County again in June of 1776 with settlers (called pobladores) on their way from Monterey to San Francisco to found the Presidio. In November of 1777, he and some of those same settlers founded the Pueblo of San José near the Guadalupe River. They were all citizens of the Spanish empire, but most were of mixed American Indian, African, and Hispanic ancestry. They later came to call themselves Californios.

Arriving in San José in early November, Moraga gave the pobladores possession in the name of his Majesty King Carlos III of Spain, marking out for them the plaza for the houses and distributing the house-lots among them. He measured off for each one a piece of land for planting a Fanega (7 acres for 1.6 bushels) of corn, and for beans and other vegetables. They immediately set to work to build the houses of palisades covered with clay, with flat roofs, and, when these were finished, each began to clear and plough his piece of ground for the planting of corn and beans. They also proceeded to build a dam to take the water from the Guadalupe River. It is thus that San José began in an area already occupied for thousands of years by the native Ohlone peoples. Their village in the area was called Tamien, and the coming of the Spanish, and the founding of the Mission Santa Clara in January of 1777, marked the beginning of the end of their way of life. Ohlone and Californio descendants are still around today. Each year, there are commemorations in San José and San Francisco that allow people today to come together to look back on those days gone by.

Greg Smestad and Mayor Reed
Greg Smestad and Mayor Chuck Reed
at the 2007 San Jose Birthday Celebration

Plaque at Peralta Adobe
(Click for larger image in new window.)

Lucille Corcel, descendant of San Jose founders and
past president of Los Californianos, bringing the
commemorative floral display to the 2007 event

Los Californianos is a non-profit organization created for the purpose of preserving the heritage of the early Hispanic Californians in Alta California (also called Californios or Californianos) by conducting research on genealogy and civil, religious, military, social and cultural activities in Alta California in order to provide an accurate and authentic oral, written, and pictorial interpretation of the history of Spanish and Mexican Alta California.

The floor, walls and oven at the Peralta were restored September 2008 via an Adobe & Straw Bale Construction Workshop taught by Bill and Athena Steen, internationally respected adobe and staw bale builders and educators.