Mission San Francisco Solano was the 21st, last, and northernmost mission in Alta California. It was named for Saint Francis Solanus. It was the only mission built in Alta California after Mexico gained independence from Spain. The difficulty of its beginning demonstrates the confusion resulting from that change in governance. The California Governor wanted a robust Mexican presence north of the San Francisco Bay to keep the Russians who had established Fort Ross on the Pacific coast from moving further inland. A young Franciscan friar from Mission San Francisco de Asis wanted to move to a location with a better climate and access to a larger number of potential converts.
Don Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo was a Californio general, statesman, and public figure. He was born a subject of Spain, performed his military duties as an officer of the Republic of Mexico, and shaped the transition of Alta California from a territory of Mexico to the U.S. state of California. He served in the first session of the California State Senate. The city of Vallejo, California, is named after him, and the nearby city of Benicia is named after his wife.
The Coast Miwok are an Indigenous people of California that were the second-largest tribe of the Miwok people. Coast Miwok inhabited the general area of present-day Marin County and southern Sonoma County in Northern California, from the Golden Gate north to Duncans Point and eastward to Sonoma Creek. Coast Miwok included the Bodega Bay Miwok, or Olamentko (Olamentke), from authenticated Miwok villages around Bodega Bay, the Marin Miwok, or Hookooeko (Huukuiko), and Southern Sonoma Miwok, or Lekahtewutko (Lekatuit). While they did not have an overarching name for themselves, the Coast Miwok word for people, Micha-ko, was suggested by A. L. Kroeber as a possible endonym, keeping with a common practice among tribal groups and the ethnographers studying them in the early 20th century and with the term Miwok itself, which is the Central Sierra Miwok word for 'people'.
Penngrove is a census-designated place (CDP) in Sonoma County, California, United States, situated between the cities of Petaluma and Cotati, at the foot of the western flank of Sonoma Mountain. It is part of the North Bay subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population was 2,522 at the 2010 census.
Rancho San Antonio, also known as the Peralta Grant, was a 44,800-acre (181 km2) land grant by Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá, the last Spanish governor of California, to Don Luís María Peralta, a sergeant in the Spanish Army and later, commissioner of the Pueblo of San José, in recognition of his forty years of service. The grant, issued on August 3, 1820, embraced the sites of the cities of San Leandro, Oakland, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, Berkeley, and Albany.
The Suisunes were a Patwin tribe of Wintun people, originating in the Suisun Bay and Suisun Marsh regions of Solano County in Northern California. Their traditional homelands stretched between what is now Suisun City, Vacaville and Putah Creek around 200 years ago. The Suisunes' main village, Yulyul, is believed to be where Rockville, California is located today. Father Abella, visitor to the tribe in 1811, indicated they resided in the present location of Fairfield, north of the Suisun Bay. One of the Suisunes' primary food sources was acorns. Their diet also included fish as well as miner's lettuce. Their huts were conical wikiups made of rushes or tule thatch.
Olompali State Historic Park is a 700-acre (2.8 km2) California State Park in Marin County, California. It consists of the former Rancho Olómpali and was the site of the famed Battle of Olómpali during the Bear Flag Revolt. Rancho Olómpali was purchased by the Californian government in 1977, which turned it into a public park.
Camilo Ynitia was born in about 1803, in Marin County, southern Marin, of the Huiman tribe near Sausalito. The family likely traveled up to Olompali, where his father had built an adobe brick home. Camilo was a leader of the Coast Miwok. Camilo was known as the last Hoipu (headman) of the Miwok community living at Olompali and the Coast Miwoks of the Southern Marin Band. Camilo was also the only Native American on the northern frontier of Alta California to secure and keep a large Mexican-era land grant: In 1843 Governor Manuel Micheltorena of Alta California deeded him the Rancho Olompali, a large tract of land that is between present-day Novato and Petaluma, California. A part of this land now comprises the Olompali State Historic Park.
Sonoma State Historic Park is a California State Park located in the center of Sonoma, California. The park consists of six sites: the Mission San Francisco Solano, the Sonoma Barracks, the Blue Wing Inn, La Casa Grande, Lachryma Montis, and the Toscano Hotel.
Rancho Suscol was an 84,000-acre (340 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Sonoma County, California, Napa County, California, and Solano County, California, given in 1843 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. In a significant land law decision, the land claim was rejected by the US Supreme Court in 1862. Rancho Suscol extended from Rancho Petaluma on the west, south down to the San Francisco Bay and Mare Island and Carquinez Strait, and then to Rancho Suisun on the east. It included present day cities of Vallejo and Benicia.
Monterey Colonial is an architectural style developed in Alta California. Although usually categorized as a sub-style of Spanish Colonial style, the Monterey style is native to the post-colonial Mexican era of Alta California. Creators of the Monterey style were mostly recent immigrants from New England states of the US, who brought familiar vernacular building styles and methods with them to California.
The Vallejo Estate is a historic house in Sonoma, California, one of the six sites that comprises the Sonoma State Historic Park. The estate was owned by General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a Californio military leader and landowner. Vallejo began buying the acreage for the house after returning from the California constitutional convention in Monterey in 1849, and resided in the house from 1852 until his death in 1890. He named the house Lachryma Montis, a rough Latin translation of Chiucuyem – the Native American name for the free-flowing spring on the property.
Rancho Petaluma was a 66,622-acre (269.61 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Sonoma County, California given in 1834 by Governor José Figueroa to Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Rancho Petaluma stretched from Petaluma River on the west over the hills and down to Sonoma Creek on the east, including all land that lay between these two waterways from the edge of San Francisco Bay to approximately the present site of Glen Ellen. The rancho included present-day Petaluma and Lakeville.
Juan Bautista Rogers Cooper was a 19th-century pioneer of California, who held British, Mexican, and finally American citizenship. Raised in Massachusetts in a maritime family, he came to the Mexican territory of Alta California as master of the ship Rover, and was a pioneer of Monterey, California, when it was the capital of the territory. He converted to Catholicism, became a Mexican citizen, married the daughter of the Mexican territorial governor, and acquired extensive land holdings in the area prior to the Mexican–American War.
Doña María Ygnacia López de Carrillo was a Californio ranchera. She was the founder of Santa Rosa. She married into the prominent Carrillo family of California and was the ancestor of numerous prominent Californians.
The Blue Wing Inn in Sonoma, California, was one of the first hotels built in the state north of San Francisco. What began as the first property transfer in the new Pueblo de Sonoma and a simple adobe residence transformed with time and the addition of more rooms into a storied landmark. During the California Gold Rush it was used by miners going to and from the gold fields and by the U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Sonoma. After many years, owners and uses - the Blue Wing Inn was purchased by the State of California in 1968 and is currently under study for its best use as part of Sonoma State Historic Park.
The Sonoma Barracks is a two-story, wide-balconied, adobe building facing the central plaza of the City of Sonoma, California. It was built by order of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo to house the Mexican soldiers that had been transferred from the Presidio of San Francisco in 1835. The Presidio Company and their commander, Vallejo, were also responsible for controlling the Native Americans living on the northern border of Mexican California.
The Mexican Secularization Act of 1833, officially called the Decree for the Secularization of the Missions of California, was an act passed by the Congress of the Union of the First Mexican Republic which secularized the Californian missions. The act nationalized the missions, transferring their ownership from the Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church to the Mexican authorities.
Don Cayetano Juárez was a Californio ranchero and soldier, who played a prominent role in the 19th century North Bay, particularly in Napa County. The home he built, the Cayetano Juárez Adobe, is the oldest building in the city of Napa.
The Vicente Martínez Adobe is an historic adobe house near Martinez, California. The house was built in 1849 by Vicente J. Martínez on the Rancho El Pinole, a land grant that had been given to his father, Ygnacio Martínez, in 1836. It was the first of its kind built in Contra Costa County. In 1853 the adobe was sold Edward Franklin, after whom the canyon where the adobe sits was named. The adobe became known as the Franklin Canyon Adobe.
