Leona Heights Neighborhood News

by Gordon Laverty

The impact of Spanish/Mexican/Californio culture on our area started in 1769, when Mission San Diego was built. Padre Junipero Serra established missions northward from San Diego to San Francisco, each one a day's walk apart. (They might be likened to an early motel chain, for travelers were welcomed for a night's stay.) The walkway/road connecting them became known as El Camino Real, The King's Highway, and finally reached up to Mission Sonoma. The main El Camino went like an arrow to San Jose, where it branched, north to San Francisco and northeast to the Peralta Rancho in Oakland. For years, there was an El Camino Bell Monument at the corner of Eighth and Broadway in Oakland.

The growing population used the trails and roads as business with the Peralta family increased, enjoying also the Peralta recreations. At the Peralta Rancho, periodic fiestas were held to commemorate church feast days or such events as the end of the cattle roundup. The partying and games lasted as long as a week and featured rodeos, where the cowboys, now Californios as they grew more and more independent of Mexico, would display their horseback prowess at cattle herding and some of the very events we associate with rodeos today. The ladies would display their sewing, cooking, and dancing talents along with theatrical offerings.

The cattle the Peraltas raised in our East Bay hills, and the trails and roads they built to tend and market their products, became the roads and streets we use today. Oakland's Grand-Lake-area Embarcadero, for example, was used by the Peraltas to get their cattle onto boats at the slough that later became Lake Merritt.

Yes, we Metro readers do live in interesting present and vibrant past segments of Bay Area history.

Leona Heights Improvement Association members are working urgently to preserve and protect from development the Leona Greenbelt, the oak-tree-wooded area below Merritt College, from Leona Lodge to Keller Avenue. If you are interested in the effort or have early maps or information related to that area, please call Gordon Laverty at 531-4860.