Leona Heights Neighborhood News

by Gordon Laverty

In 1769 the Spanish came to what are now the Laurel, Fruitvale, Dimond, and Leona Heights districts. The Spanish governor in Mexico City sent explorer Don Gaspar Portola to pave the way for more Spanish settlements in Northern California to hold off claims by the French, English, and Russians. Portola discovered San Francisco Bay as his party approached down the San Mateo Peninsula. Once in the area we now call San Francisco, he looked eastward across the Bay to a place he called "contra costa" (the opposite shore) and sent Lieutenant Fages and Roman Catholic missionary Father Crespi to investigate. They found Contra Costa to be delightfully warm and different from the windy, cold, and foggy San Francisco area. Fages and Crespi also found residents they called "Digger" Indians already living in the Laurel, Fruitvale, and Leona areas, where the Indians made meal from acorns and dug up grubs and other critters to roast along with shellfish over their family campfires. Most of these Encinal and Ohlone Indians soon moved farther inland to preserve their quiet life as more Spaniards arrived, but some stayed to work on what would be ranchos. Jos? Moraga, a Spanish soldier, visited the areas by Lake Merritt, the Kaiser Building, and the Rockridge BART Station. In 1776, Moraga founded a fort at what is now San Francisco, then occupied a large land-grant rancho, one of the first given a Spanish soldier on the east side of the Bay. Soon another soldier, Sergeant Luis Mar?a Peralta, was given a huge rancho that extended from San Leandro to Berkeley, bordered by the East Bay Hills on the north and San Francisco Bay on the south. Luis had four sons. One son, Antonio, found a nice flat spot in what is now the Fruitvale district, where he built a home. In the 1900s, it was moved near Dimond Pool and became the Boy Scout meeting place. Luis's rancho was divided into four parts for his sons: San Leandro, to Ygnacio; Rancho San Antonio, from Church Street to Lake Merritt, to Antonio; Lake Merritt to Fish Ranch Road, to Vicente; and the land from Claremont Avenue to El Cerrito Creek, to Jos?. So the Leona Heights area fell into the rancho given Antonio Peralta. One part of the demarcation line lies along Leona Creek. More Leona history next issue. Leona Heights residents thank Desley Brooks, our Councilmember, and the Oakland Police Department for clamping down on the drivers of cars with shrill noise-making automobile exhaust pipe whistles. We understand that Brooks has initiated action to increase whistle fines to $250 to assure driver restraint on whistle installation. These moves and citation of muffler shops installing the whistles have reduced the noise to a great degree. Thank you.