These blog machines need to give folks a 5 minute edit time to fix stuff…

Rather than “Not Between 13th-16th…

But should say:

… but between 13th-16th between Mission and Harrison.

r

Yes, those are the two maps I’ve seen as well. Actually the City’s planning report also has several additional maps that help to pinpoint the location of Camaritas. Camaritas was a bit bigger than just a block. As the 2nd of the two maps you linked to shows, the Southwest corner of the Garden starts at what would be the Bart Plaza and extends almost all the way east to where Mission Creek was.

The city’s North Mission Planning report is worth having for more than jut the map…

http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/1054/files/mission%20district%20nov07.pdf

But on Page 34 of the report, it shows a map that locates Camaritas. Camaritas according to that map is north of the Willows area that is shown on a lot of the early maps located around 17th-18th, between Dolores and Mission… Not between 13th-16th, between Mission and Harrison.

I actually thought I spotted the document you had gotten a reference to it being the Willows.

It is entirely possible that there are two willows in the Mission. One of the more important aspects of some of the old Land Grant maps points to the Spanish term for a particular marshy area that includes willows that usually surround it… the term is Sausal.

The reference to testimony of Sanchez that Noe fenced the marshy side of the plot is from a transcription that I’ve misplaced, but will forward when it resurfaces.

I sure would like to see your materials referencing this. The city paper’s carried the history of John Center. History is full of errors, an example is rather important picture of the Mission from 1860 claiming that the Mission Woolen Mill on Harrison was called Center Woolen Mill which isn’t correct. Check out the picture and then use the detail option to look at the very large mill just west of Mission Creek. The owners of the Mission Woolen Mill purchased the land from John Center in 1859.

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf7g50119h/?query=mission%201860&brand=calisphere

I have the original newspaper article from the 1860′s, where John Center publicly claimed under oath during the tidelands hearings to have fenced in the Willows. He also gained control of Noah’s Garden, Camaritas. How he did so is of great interest to me since he claimed to have made a large amount of money off the Camaritas where he was growing vegitables. Information leading to how he gained control over Camaritas after the death of Gurerro represents a mystery to me.

I obtained the land maps for Camaritas (see below for link to the map) which puts the southwest border of Camaritas at Mission and 16th. This is right off of copy of the map. Note that Noe gave Camaritas to former SF Asiss Alcalde Francisco Guererro in 1846, who was killed on July 13th 1851 just before he was due to testify about the Santillan Mission land grant which was eventually tossed by SCUS justice Stephen Field in 1860.

In doing a history of the building I manage, my primary goal is to track down the ownership of the property all the way back.

Since the city’s files were lost in 1906 I’ve had to rely on Sanborn maps and the SF directories, then the earlier land grant maps.

To engage Christopher on the Laguna…

I’d be interested in the Palou translations. Which I haven’t had a chance to look at but would like to do so. Did you get them from Bolton? Fray Englhardt in his 1924 book on Mission Dolores states that he (Englehardt) created the now infamous Manantial map based directly from Palou’s diary.

Note that the Camaritas land Grant map that shows a very small laguna located north-east of the corner Mission and 16th.

Here’s the link to that map showing the lagoon:

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb2290039v/?query=camaritas&brand=calisphere

Note the existence of the lagoon is more than just of historic interest to me. It could be a life or death issue for many people at the property I manage. There may truly not have been a lagoon of the size in the 18th century there, but what about 500 or a 1,000 years ago? The 1853 geological survey map indicates that the entire area from Mission Creek all the way to Dolores is made up of Alluvial soil. Those soils were deposited there by water.

“Las Camaritas” was also known as “The Willows” and also sometimes as “Noah’s Gardens” (an Americanization of “Noe”)

I am coauthor of Creek & Watershed Map of San Francisco, which is reproduced on the PDF from SFPUC which you have linked to. In specific, I am responsible for the representation of the lagoon in the location sometimes known as either Laguna Dolores or Laguna Manantial.

I was wrong!

I have since spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars tracking this story. I have retranslated the diaries of Anza, Font, and Palou; had surveys from disenos replotted, and have examined over 100 maps of the Mission prior to the 1870s. Numbers of historians geographers, and interested members of the Mission community have kindly shared their assets, information, and analysis. The deeper I have gotten into the research, the clearer I am that the representations of this water body in the historical literature resulted from a confusion by Anglo historians who misread a difficult passage in Font’s diary and confused Washerwoman’s Lagoon (in Cow Hollow) with the water body to which Anza gave the name De los Dolores – a name subsequently reapropriated by Palou to apply to the estuary clearly shown on all the Coast Survey charts east of Shotwell. This estuary did have a narrow arm meeting the creek running down a gully where 18th Street is now. Some evidence suggests that small dams may have been built in that gully between the gold rush and the 1870s, perhaps accounting for oral recollections of swimmable, even boatable water bodies upstream of the Willows. Neither mysterious vanishing acts nor astonishing amounts of Indian slave labor required.

I will be giving a free lecture at SFSU on October 6th giving a preliminary look at the information, and other lectures will follow. The Creek & Watershed Map of San Francisco will soon be updated, reprinted, and available from SFPUC.

Christopher Richard
Curator of Aquatic Biology,
Oakland Museum of California

Furthermore, I’ve also now found a land grant map of the lagoon being part of the Camaritas land grant known as Noah’s Garden that was originally given to Jose de Jesus Noe in 1840.

A further note for anyone reading my earlier posts. Englehardt also reprinted the exact inventories by year of all livestock at the Mission from its inception until 1840. The cattle estimates I originally posted above, which were also printed for a number of years in the annual SF Directory during the 1860′s was high. However, livestock numbers still aproached 22,000 head during the 1820′s, and the fact that the Presidio also raised cattled (there are pictures of cattle grazing around the city) still leaves open the idea that the cattle played a huge environmental role in undermining the ecology of the city. This can be further seen by taking a coastal google ride along the coast both north and south of the city where nowhere do we see the kind of dunes that happened in SF.

So, it is still my opinion that such numbers of cattle could have easily played a major role in the draining of Manatial as well as creating major ecological damages to the delicate ecology of the city.

On an aside, Mission Creek was officially filled in by the city in 1876. In a major disaster the contractor started the job just prior to the rainy season starting at the bottom of the creek, resulting in swamping effects all the way up to 18th street.

I also found out who originally fenced in the Willows. The guy was called the father of “white man’s version” Mission and his name was John Center. He became one of the biggest owners of land in the North Mission, getting a hold of Noe’s land as well as the Treat Brothers race track which he then subdivided. He was also part of the Mission/Protero vigilantes that routinely went around burning and even killing squatters in the Mission. He died in 1908 (16th Street was in his name until about 1860) and was a millionaire. He built a plank rode out of town to the south, was a big real estate developer, owned the water works that saved the Mission form further damages in 1906 and opened up a hardware store that is still in existence today.

ps…

Also found a baseball field located on the spot where the current Muni barn is on Harrison and 15/16th. It was replaced by a giant Furniture company that took over the block around 1900.

A disueño was a requirement in any petition on the part of a Spaniard to receive a land grant. It would typically be a hand-drawn “map” of the requested land, with landmarks included (lakes, trails, trees, scrub brush, etc), and marked off in ropes or chains thrown down from a horse to measure it off. Very different from a contemporary survey.