San Diego's Contested Heritage: A Traveler's Guide to the Art and History of a Borderland City
Part I: The Birthplace on Presidio Hill – Where California Began High on a hill overlooking the confluence of the San Diego River valley and the Pacific Ocean, a single Spanish Revival tower rises against the sky. This is the Junípero Serra Museum, and it marks a location of immense significance, a place often called the "Plymouth Rock of the West Coast". It is here, on what is now known as Presidio Hill, that the first permanent European settlement in Alta California was established on May 17, 1769. A combined force of soldiers, sailors, Franciscan missionaries, and indigenous laborers arriving from New Spain planted the Spanish flag, founding both a military fortress, the Royal Presidio of San Diego, and a religious outpost, Mission San Diego de Alcalá. 2 For the official historical record, this is where California began. Yet, to begin the story here is to commit a profound act of historical erasure. This hill, and the entire region, is the unceded ancestral homeland of ...