The latest posting to Names on the Signs in Santa Cruz is called The Ranchos. Read it here.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Names on the Signs: Branciforte
Only a few years after the founding of Mission Santa Cruz, another group of Spaniards came to Santa Cruz on a very different sort of mission. In 1796-97 Lt. Alberto de Cordova, a Spanish military engineer, and Diego de Borica, Governor of Las Californias, came to survey the site for a new civilian settlement. The spot they selected was across the San Lorenzo River from the Mission, up the hill and out of the flood plain. The Governor proposed to call the new establishment Villa de Branciforte. Where did that name come from?
Unlike the missionaries, Borica did not choose to honor a saint or a holy day. Being a smart politician, he named the new town after his superior, Don Miguel de la Grua Talamanca y Branciforte, Marques de Branciforte, Viceroy of New Spain. In those days, the length of a man’s name and title indicated his social status, so Branciforte apparently enjoyed a rather elevated level. He was actually born in Sicily, became an officer in the Spanish army and rapidly rose to prominence through political skill and marriage into a Spanish noble family. Our home town thus acquired its first Italian name many years before any Italian ever set foot here - Branciforte never saw the town named after him.
The Villa was one of only three civilian pueblos established in California under Spanish colonial rule: the other two are Los Angeles and San Jose. The designation of Villa meant that it was intended as a settlement for retired veteran soldiers who would act as reserves who could be recalled to active duty if needed. That method of colonization goes back at least to the Roman Empire.
The Villa centered where Branciforte School is today - the State Historical Site monument is on the front lawn. Villa boundaries were roughly at today’s Soquel Drive on the south, De Laveaga Park on the north, Branciforte Creek on the west and Morrissey Boulevard to the east. The Villa also had grazing rights on ‘common lands’ extending as far as Aptos Creek. Despite the local attractions, the Spanish colonial government had trouble inducing folks to leave their homes in established towns and move to the isolated wilderness of California.
Nevertheless, the first census listed forty men, women and children living in 13 households at Branciforte in 1797. A year later, this group was supplemented by a few more civilians and six retiring soldiers, still young after a 10-year enlistment. By 1799 the population had grown to seventy; in 1801 it reached a high of 107, including 20 veterans.
From the start, the worldly ways of the Villa clashed with the pious padres across the river. The main street doubled as a race track. Dog fighting and bear baiting were popular activities (the area had many bears back then).
These pastimes were, no doubt, accompanied by a certain amount of drinking and gambling. Some Branciforte residents raised suspicions by choosing to build their dwellings hidden in the trees down along the creek, rather than on the open hilltop where they could be observed from the Mission. Another Mission grievance was that the Ohlone converts were tempted to sneak off to party across the river, neglecting their labors and religious duties. Actually, that sounds a lot like me as a teenager at church summer camp – I guess some things haven’t changed so much in 200+ years.
The Villa’s fortunes varied through the years, but it never established itself as a commercial center. Instead, the City of Santa Cruz grew out of the industries established by the Mission, and eventually annexed the Branciforte neighborhood in 1905. A little-remembered fact is that, following California statehood in 1850, our county was originally named Branciforte County. Protests by citizens living on the other side of the river soon got the name changed to Santa Cruz County.
Still, the name Branciforte is not forgotten, even if few know its origins or its founders. The old main street of the Villa is today’s North Branciforte Avenue. We have two Branciforte schools and a Branciforte library. Nearby is Branciforte Creek, its course followed into the hills by Branciforte Drive (named after the creek, not the Villa). The one remaining Villa structure in the area is a private home known as the Branciforte Adobe. The most impressive use of the name is at Branciforte Plaza, the nicely-executed conversion of an old hospital which has, however, no relationship to the Villa (if you look closely at the stone facing under the raised letters spelling 'Branciforte, you can see the original incised letters spelling 'Hospital').
A few of the Villa’s founding family names can still be seen on signs around the area, although not inside the original boundaries. These include: Arana Gulch (above the Small Craft Harbor), Rodriguez Street in Live Oak and Pinto Lake in Watsonville. Another early family, the Castros, rose to prominence in the next era: the Ranchos of the Californios.
Further reading:
Unlike the missionaries, Borica did not choose to honor a saint or a holy day. Being a smart politician, he named the new town after his superior, Don Miguel de la Grua Talamanca y Branciforte, Marques de Branciforte, Viceroy of New Spain. In those days, the length of a man’s name and title indicated his social status, so Branciforte apparently enjoyed a rather elevated level. He was actually born in Sicily, became an officer in the Spanish army and rapidly rose to prominence through political skill and marriage into a Spanish noble family. Our home town thus acquired its first Italian name many years before any Italian ever set foot here - Branciforte never saw the town named after him.
The Villa was one of only three civilian pueblos established in California under Spanish colonial rule: the other two are Los Angeles and San Jose. The designation of Villa meant that it was intended as a settlement for retired veteran soldiers who would act as reserves who could be recalled to active duty if needed. That method of colonization goes back at least to the Roman Empire.
The Villa centered where Branciforte School is today - the State Historical Site monument is on the front lawn. Villa boundaries were roughly at today’s Soquel Drive on the south, De Laveaga Park on the north, Branciforte Creek on the west and Morrissey Boulevard to the east. The Villa also had grazing rights on ‘common lands’ extending as far as Aptos Creek. Despite the local attractions, the Spanish colonial government had trouble inducing folks to leave their homes in established towns and move to the isolated wilderness of California.
Nevertheless, the first census listed forty men, women and children living in 13 households at Branciforte in 1797. A year later, this group was supplemented by a few more civilians and six retiring soldiers, still young after a 10-year enlistment. By 1799 the population had grown to seventy; in 1801 it reached a high of 107, including 20 veterans.
From the start, the worldly ways of the Villa clashed with the pious padres across the river. The main street doubled as a race track. Dog fighting and bear baiting were popular activities (the area had many bears back then).
These pastimes were, no doubt, accompanied by a certain amount of drinking and gambling. Some Branciforte residents raised suspicions by choosing to build their dwellings hidden in the trees down along the creek, rather than on the open hilltop where they could be observed from the Mission. Another Mission grievance was that the Ohlone converts were tempted to sneak off to party across the river, neglecting their labors and religious duties. Actually, that sounds a lot like me as a teenager at church summer camp – I guess some things haven’t changed so much in 200+ years.
The Villa’s fortunes varied through the years, but it never established itself as a commercial center. Instead, the City of Santa Cruz grew out of the industries established by the Mission, and eventually annexed the Branciforte neighborhood in 1905. A little-remembered fact is that, following California statehood in 1850, our county was originally named Branciforte County. Protests by citizens living on the other side of the river soon got the name changed to Santa Cruz County.
Still, the name Branciforte is not forgotten, even if few know its origins or its founders. The old main street of the Villa is today’s North Branciforte Avenue. We have two Branciforte schools and a Branciforte library. Nearby is Branciforte Creek, its course followed into the hills by Branciforte Drive (named after the creek, not the Villa). The one remaining Villa structure in the area is a private home known as the Branciforte Adobe. The most impressive use of the name is at Branciforte Plaza, the nicely-executed conversion of an old hospital which has, however, no relationship to the Villa (if you look closely at the stone facing under the raised letters spelling 'Branciforte, you can see the original incised letters spelling 'Hospital').
A few of the Villa’s founding family names can still be seen on signs around the area, although not inside the original boundaries. These include: Arana Gulch (above the Small Craft Harbor), Rodriguez Street in Live Oak and Pinto Lake in Watsonville. Another early family, the Castros, rose to prominence in the next era: the Ranchos of the Californios.
Further reading:
- Art and History Museum of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County History Journal, Issue Number Three. (1997)
- Villa de Branciforte Preservation Society
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Names on the Signs: The Missionaries
One of the marvels of traveling to Europe and the Mediterranean is the mind-boggling antiquity of some of the places you can visit.
From 1000-year-old castles in England to 2000-year-old ruins in Rome to 3000-year-old pyramids in Egypt, then back to England for 5000-year-old Stonehenge.
I get feelings of historical inferiority when I compare those to the oldest structures in California – the adobe buildings of the Spanish missions, which were built between 1769 and 1823.
Even so, missions in other California towns are a big deal. I recently visited Mission Santa Barbara and watched busload after busload of tourists disembark and start taking photos of each other.
Not so at Mission Santa Cruz. Why? Well, mostly because there’s not much left to see, but there once was a lot more.
Mission Santa Cruz (1791) was not the first or the last of the California missions – it was number 12 of 21. The fact that it was established 21 years after Carmel Mission reflects a reality of geography all Highway 17 commuters understand: it’s not easy to get here or, once you are here, to continue to anywhere else.
Even our founding explorer Portolà only ended up here because he got lost in the fog and made a wrong turn looking for Monterey. Once you finally do get here, of course, you don’t want to go anywhere else.
The Spanish Franciscan missionaries who came north from Monterey were led by Fermín Lasuén, successor to Junípero Serra. They followed in the footsteps of the Portolà expedition more than 20 years after Serra established the third California mission in Carmel.
Lasuén was encouraged by Portolà’s earlier writing, in which he reported that our end of Vizcaíno’s Bahia de Monterrey had plenty of fresh water in the Rio de San Lorenzo and Arroyo Santa Cruz.
He had also found fertile, open land for farming and pasturage, a mild climate, friendly natives and all the seafood you could eat.
Lasuén adopted the name Santa Cruz for the mission, which at first was located on flat land near the San Lorenzo River. One rainy winter convinced the friars to move to higher ground, and the mission was rebuilt in its current location up on the hill.
At its peak, the mission complex included some 32 buildings, but only one survives today. For a variety of reasons, Mission Santa Cruz never really prospered. By the time the mission was secularized in 1834-36, only a few native converts still lived there, and even fewer were local Ohlone.
The Mexican government took away most of the mission’s extensive lands, which originally included all of the coastal area from Point Año Nuevo to Aptos, and divided them up into Ranchos.
The former mission was reduced to a parish church. The chapel was apparently not well constructed and/or maintained, and most of the front and roof of the adobe structure (including the bell tower) collapsed following a series of earthquakes in 1857.
The current Holy Cross (English for Santa Cruz) church was constructed in 1889 on the original site. Today’s half-size replica of the original chapel, based entirely on a painting created from oral descriptions, was built in 1931.
The only surviving adobe building, originally a residential dormitory for neophytes (native converts), is now part of the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park on School Street.
Did the missionaries give us any names for our signs?
There’s Mission Street, of course, and many other uses of the name Mission. The names of the missionaries themselves have been oddly neglected here.
When I was a kid, every fourth-grader learned about the saintly Father Serra (his reputation was tarnished somewhat by later studies). Serra never made it to Santa Cruz, however, so there’s no big statue like the one on Hwy 280.
Lasuén, the successor, founded as many missions as Serra, but is not as well known. Still, other mission towns have streets and schools named for him, but not Santa Cruz.
The Santa Barbara mission has a prominently-displayed statue of Lasuén, but when I finally discovered that Santa Cruz also has a statue, it was hidden in the enclosed garden behind the mission museum. As I approached, I could see that it’s the same bronze statue as the one at Santa Barbara. Makes sense, I thought - both missions were founded by Lasuén, so save a little money by using the same casting. But wait – the name plate on our statue says it’s Junípero Serra, “founder of the California missions”!!!!
Lasuén’s successors at Mission Santa Cruz are even more thoroughly forgotten. One of them, Andres Quintana, achieved some notoriety in 1812 by becoming the first California missionary to be murdered by neophytes, and the subject of the first autopsy performed in California.
Allegedly, Quintana was killed because he used torture to discipline the native laborers. That’s not a good way to get a statue in the park, but we do have a two-block-long Quintana Street in the flats below the hill, in the area of the original mission. It runs next to the railroad tracks, well hidden away from the traffic of River Street.
Another possible reason for the neglect of the Santa Cruz missionaries was the perceived failure of the mission, relative to others around the state. Some of the missions managed to hold on to quite a bit of their land after secularization, and again when California statehood nullified many of the Mexican land grants after 1850.
Names on the Signs: The Explorers
In comparison to other parts of California, Santa Cruz was missed by the early European explorers. The first voyage to come close was the Spanish expedition led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who sailed north from Mexico in 1542 on a mission to explore the unknown coast.
Cabrillo gave names to many places in California, but, for some reason, none of those names were retained by future Spanish explorers. Cabrillo landed at places now known as San Diego, San Pedro and the Channel Islands. He sailed past Point Conception, missed the entrances to Monterey and San Francisco bays, and made it as far north as the mouth of the Russian River before turning back.
On the way south, he found and sailed into Monterey Bay but didn’t land. Still, Cabrillo was the first European to come anywhere close to Santa Cruz, so his is the oldest European name to appear on local signs: at Cabrillo College. The section of Highway 1 running through Santa Cruz County is known by some as Cabrillo Highway. The photo is of a sign from San Mateo County, but I haven’t found one locally. Maybe some observant blog reader knows where there is one?
On the basis of Cabrillo’s voyage, Spain claimed the California coast as part of New Spain, a huge area that included today’s Mexico and Central America in addition to much of the southwestern and south-central United States. England also had colonial ambitions, and Queen Elizabeth dispatched Francis Drake in 1577 to plant the British flag. During his round-the-world journey, Drake also sailed north along the California coast. The exact location of his landings is unknown, but no one has ever claimed he stopped in Santa Cruz.
Spain moved to follow up on that brief flurry of exploratory activity. A second sailing expedition, led by Sebastián Vizcaíno, arrived at the southern end of our bay in 1602. Vizcaíno named it Bahia de Monterrey, after the Viceroy of New Spain. The name stuck, superceding Cabrillo’s Bahia de los Piños (Bay of Pines). Vizcaíno named lots of other places around Monterey and further south, but never came to our end of the bay. His expedition left without establishing a settlement, and our quiet bay was left to the Ohlone once again.
Over 150 years later, Spain was finally roused to action by the expansion of British and Russian trading posts southward along the Pacific Coast from Alaska and Canada. In 1769, an expedition commanded by Gaspar de Portolà set out from Mexico to rediscover the bay described by Vizcaíno. They reached the bay on a typical summer day and found the bay obscured by fog. They didn’t even realize they were in a bay.
Thinking they had missed Monterey Bay, Portolà’s party turned north and marched until they got to a large river which they named Rio de San Lorenzo. Crossing the river, they explored the area and found a spring-fed creek, which they named Arroyo Santa Cruz. The creek, which flows into Neary Lagoon, is known today as Majors Creek or Laurel Street Brook. Soon, Portolà moved on up the coast to discover the San Francisco Bay before turning around and marching back to San Diego. He never returned to Santa Cruz, but those two names stayed on. Portolà's name is memorialized on signs up and down the California Coast, but not a lot in the Santa Cruz area. We have Portola Drive out in Pleasure Point, but that's about it.
After Portolà, more than 20 more years were to pass before the arrival of more European visitors. The next Spaniards, however, came to stay. They were the missionaries.
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