Updates to the El Rio Mission/Valencia history post — UC Berkeley has the 1857 map for the Bernal land claim settlement – the tract is enormous, click to see the entire thing. But here we zoom to “Widow Carmen Bernal’s House”. (J.C. Bernal died in 1842, and the family spent five years in US courts securing the land grant after California was admitted to the U.S.)
The Bernal house was on the north side of what would become Duncan, under what is now the SE corner of the St. Luke’s parkade. Here’s a snippet of the land grant map I loaded into Google Earth:
Click image to zoom, or see the entire map on Calisphere.
Note this matches up perfectly with the 1859 US Coast Survey map. (The red rectangle is El Rio.)
Plus they got this fine seal:
[...] Serpentine followed the old stone wall marking the northern border of Jose Bernal’s giant plat of land. [...]
[...] And what was there before Recreation Grounds? We have to remember that in 1868 it was built smack in the middle of the old Pioneer Race Course owned by George Treat (yes, that Treat), just above the stone wall marking the northern border of Bernal’s rancho. [...]
[...] owned by George Treat (yes, that Treat), just above the stone wall marking the northern border of Bernal’s rancho (yes, that [...]