Monterey knows how to embrace
its rich Spanish history
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By Miguel Pérez
To explore Hispanic history in Monterey, get ready to visit a huge number of significant landmarks. In California, only San Diego and San Francisco can compete with Monterey's recognition of its Spanish roots. After all, this is the bay discovered by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542 and named by Sebastian Vizcaíno in 1602. This is the place where Father Junípero Serra celebrated a historic Mass and established a Franciscan mission, and where Gaspar de Portolá founded a presidio and a pueblo in 1770. This was the first capital of Spanish California! Hispanic history is abundant here, and it's on display! |
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At the Presidio of Monterey, established by Portolá and still an active U.S. Army installation, there is history that goes back more than 250 years! In the area closest to the bay, the only part of the presidio that is open to the public, there are several monuments recognizing Monterey's Spanish roots. "It is considered by some historians as the most historically significant site on the West Coast of America," says a historical marker.
It's called the "Lower Presidio State Historic Park," and it is perched on a hill overlooking Monterey Bay. Perhaps most prominent is an impressive monument depicting Father Serra's arrival here by boat on May 31, 1770. |
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And perhaps most surprising is learning that, a few weeks after Serra was canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, the statue was vandalized and beheaded and that it was and restored a few months later.
"When Serra was made a saint, somebody took the head off and they found it about a year later in a tide pool around here," said Susan Murphy, a volunteer at the nearby Presidio of Monterey Museum. She said there was no doubt that the statue would be restored, "so it was a lot cheaper to put the head back on than to build a new one." She said the repairs may not be noticeable now, "but I think the whole thing was crazy. |
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Yet the historial markers explain why these monuments deserve to be on this hill.
“After establishing the first mission in California at San Diego in 1769, Serra and Captain Gaspar de Portolá founded Monterey on June 3, 1770, Portolá having arrived by land and Serra by sea," a historical marker explains. "Portolá established the Presidio de Monterey and Serra founded Mission San Carlos, later moved to the Carmel River," the marker adds. "He went on to establish eight more missions in California, from San Diego to San Francisco before his death in 1784." |
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The marker also recognizes that, “Serra and the Spanish mission system are criticized by some for suppressing the native culture and spreading disease and suffering among Native Americans in California." Yet the marker concludes by also recognizing that when Serra was canonized as a Saint by Pope Francis in 2015, it was a recognition of Serra's "evangelism and the dignity he held for the native peoples he loved."
Some background: Cabrillo may have only seen the bay from his ship in 1542, but 60 years later, Vizcaíno and his men were the first recorded Europeans to step ashore here in 1602, predating the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock (1620) by about 18 years! Although Cabrillo named it La Bahia de los Pinos (Bay of Pines), Vizcaíno renamed it Puerto de Monterey, in recognition of the Count of Monterey, the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico who had appointed him to explore and locate safe harbors in Alta California. |
Romanticized interpretation of Father Serra celebrating Mass at Monterey Bay, beside the same oak where the Sebastian Vizcaíno expedition had done the same, 168 years earlier. It was painted by Léon Trousset in 1877, more than a century after the actual event occurred in 1770.
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After landing on a sanding beach next to a small stream that emptied into the bay, Vizcaíno reported Vizcaíno reported having his chaplain, Carmelite friar Antonio de la Ascension, celebrate Mass under the shade of a massive oak tree on December 17, 1602.
And believing that he had located the same tree, Father Serra also celebrated Mass there on June 3, 1770 — with bells hanging from the Vizcaíno tree! Captain Portolá, the military Governor of California, unfurled the Spanish flag and claimed the area for King Carlos III. The Vizcaíno-Serra Oak apparently survived until the early 1900s, when it was damaged at the roots by excessive water from a channel that collapsed. According to an exhibit at the nearby Mission Carmel, "On July 6, 1904, the Monterey newspaper reported that the "living monument... was dead". The exhibit explains the trunk was dug up and thrown into the bay by unsuspecting workmen and later towed back out by fishermen who understood its historical significance. "The remaining trunk was put on display and over the years, the uncovered bark and branches slowly eroded, and pieces were removed and preserved for permanent display," the exhibit says. |
Image of Sebastian Vizcaíno at the oak he chose to celebrate Mass, from the Monterey State Historic Park
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I found one of those displays at the Mission Carmel museum. The exhibit calls the Vizcaíno-Serra Oak "California’s Plymouth Rock.” I also found a picture of the oak when it was still alive in 1888. (See photos).
To mark the Vizcaíno and Serra landing site, although 168 years apart, a huge Celtic Cross monument was erected in 1908 at the spot where the Vizcaíno-Serra Oak once stood. (See photo). |
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And only a few feet away from the Celtic Cross, the plaque on a rock monument notes that, "On June 3, 1770 near this spot Don Gaspar de Portolá, soldier, explorer, patriot of Spain, founded the Presidio and Settlement of Monterey." (See Photo).
At Presidio of Monterey Museum, there are few but significant exhibits on the Presidio's history, from a magnificent model of the San Diego, Vizcaíno's flagship, to great illustrations of "El Castillo," the Spanish fort overlooking the bay built on this hill in 1792 to protect Monterey. |
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Although Vizcaíno enthusiastically reported that the bay was a "noble harbor" with abundant water, wood and game, well suited for settlement and missions, it took Spain 168 years to follow his advice and try to colonize this area, choosing Monterey as the provisional capital of Alta California. Even then, historians believe that Spanish colonization was primarily intended to discourage the expansion of Russian settlements into territories already claimed by Spain in the Pacific Northwest.
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"With Russian and British incursions threatening the Spanish colony, the construction of a fortress here on the "hill that dominates the port" was ordered to protect the Monterey harbor," says the maker at the site where the fort stood.
At a museum in another park, I learned more details about "El Castillo's early years. "Brush huts were hastily constructed, including one that was completed and blessed on June 14, 1770 to serve as a temporary church," says an exhibit at the Monterey State Historic Park. "These huts were gradually replaced by more substantial mud-roofed, wooden structures. A wooden palisade (a 9-to-12-foot-high wall of logs stuck upright in the ground) enclosed the whole establishment. Cannons were mounted inside a guard tower at each corner." Historical markers at the site where El Castillo stood, explain that over the years the fort "was improved with reinforced walls, a barracks, and seven to ten cannons." And as El Castillo grew larger, it also became California's center of statesmanship, rebellion, and even piracy! |
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A few years after Mexico gained its independence from Spain and California became a Mexican province, there were many Californios who were dissatisfied with Mexican rule. "In November 1836, California-born Juan Bautista Alvarado led a rebellion of disaffected rancheros against Mexican rule and took possession of El Castillo," says a historical marker at the former Castillo site. "After firing three cannon balls across the Harbor, Governor (Nicolás) Gutiérrez immediately surrendered. Alvarado was appointed governor, declaring California a "free and sovereign state" within the Mexican Republic."
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But the marker also notes that a few years later, "one of the strangest military events in American history took place here." That's because in October of 1842, mistakenly believing that the United States was at war with Mexico, American Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones sent five ships into the harbor and seized Monterey.
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"Sailors and marines landed and hauled down the Mexican flag at El Castillo," another marker says. "Two days later, learning of his error ... an embarrassed Catesby Jones apologized and sailed away, but not before entertaining his California hosts with banquets and dances."
Four years later, after the start of the Mexican-American War in 1846, American troops indeed took permanent possession of Monterey, under Commodore John Drake Sloat's Pacific Squadron, without firing a shot. There is a monument commemorating that event here too. (See photos). |
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One year later, in 1847, the Americans replaced El Castillo, with a larger fort further up the hill. Yet during its 55 years, El Castillo served as a military post for Spanish, Mexican and American troops. It stood in the area where the Junípero Serra Monument now stands. El Castillo was excavated by archeologists in 1967, and re-covered with earth to protect it. Yet another historical marker here takes park visitors much further back in time. It recognizes "Monterey's First People," who had been here for thousands of years before Spanish colonization. “When the Spanish first settled the area in 1770, they found well-established tribal communities. People speaking distinctly different languages were living in the area – the (coastal) Rumsien Ohlone and the (inland) Esselen,” the marker explains. |
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“They had their own spiritual beliefs, practices and celebrations with friendly neighboring tribal groups. The people lived in homes made of willow and wood poles. They moved between several established villages, each with its own leader who organized the hunting, gathering, and storage of food supplies; oversaw important ceremonies; and settled disputes.”
The maker also notes that despite the abrupt changes brought by Spanish colonization, “bringing radically different living conditions, new social and religious systems disrupting traditional food supplies, and introducing devastating diseases,” native people persevered and survived. “Today their descendants carry on their traditions through a rich tapestry of stories songs, dances, crafts and rituals.” There are other noteworthy Hispanic landmarks in Monterey, and I intend to visit them. But before leaving the Lower Presidio Historic Park, one cannot discount the time when El Castillo was overtaken, and Monterey was ransacked, by foreign invaders regarded as pirates. It was a time when Hispanics were fighting from both sides of the cannons. There is a monument recognizing that time here, and it will be the topic of my next article. Are you coming? |
Lower Presidio State Historic Park
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CALIFORNIA ROAD TRIP/25
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