Heritage: Latino

Historic Sites

Some of the best places to see the legacy of the Latino culture are California State Parks. Preserving more than 4.5 million Californian artifacts, the State Park System's 47 historic parks and monuments and 63 museums and visitor centers are where the legacies are remembered and shared daily. What's alive and well in these special places is their spirit. The modest dignity, serenity, and peace of these spaces transport us back to the fascinating period of California's earliest Spanish and Mexican settlements.

San Diego became California's first Spanish settlement in 1769. Today, Old Town San Diego State Historic Park offers a unique experience of living history. Five original adobes from the early American period of 1821-1872 still stand, as well as a schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, and a stable with a carriage collection. A full day of history comes alive during the Living History Re-enactments presented on the fourth Saturday of each month…

East of Escondido is San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park, honoring the soldiers who fought on December 6, 1846. This was the bloodiest and most controversial battle of the Mexican-American War…Pío Pico State Historic Park in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier was named for the last Governor of Mexican California. Pico's ancestry included Mexican, African, Indian, and Italian, and this home was built as a headquarters for his 8,891-acre ranch…

Heading north, El Presidio de Santa Barbara State Historic Park includes that city's oldest building, El Cuartel, which is also the second oldest in the state. Constructed in 1782, the presidio served as the military and government headquarters for the lands between San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles until 1846…

Founded in 1787, two miles northeast of Lompoc, La Purísima Mission State Historic Park is the largest and most authentic mission restoration project in the American west. The park contains the church, shops, quarters, springhouse, cemetery, and gardens…

Monterey State Historic Park is the site where the American flag was first officially raised in California on July 7, 1846. Ten buildings, including the state's first theater and several residences, are open to visitors…

Another complex of well preserved buildings stands on the site of Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park. The church collapsed after an earthquake in 1857, but a small replica, built in 1931, houses the original statuary, candlesticks, paintings, and tabernacle…

Olompali State Historic Park is a 700-acre site on the east-facing slopes of the Marín Peninsula, overlooking the Petaluma River and San Pablo Bay. The park features several historic buildings, including the adobe house of Camilo Ynitia, the well-respected Native American leader and cultural link between the California Indians and the Californios…

Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park in Napa, completed in 1846, provided local farmers a place to meet and discuss the news while their wheat was being processed. Edward Turner Bale's widow, Maria, was a niece of General Mariano G. Vallejo. It was she who modernized the mill and increased the size of its wheel from 20 feet to its present 36-foot height. Learn more during Old Mill Days in October through a variety of interpretive activities by costumed docents…

Sonoma State Historic Park is the location of the Sonoma Barracks and General Mariano G. Vallejo's home, Lachryma Montis, set on 49 acres of land.

Visit some of California's other great missions to explore Latino Heritage. The Mission Dolores, completed in 1791, is the original mission church and the oldest building in San Francisco…San Diego's Mission San Luis Rey de Francia on Mission Avenue took ten years to build and was once the largest and wealthiest of the State's missions...Mission Valley's Basilica San Diego de Alcalá, was the first mission built on the California coast. Founded in 1769, it was completely restored in 1931. Founded in 1797, the San Fernando Rey de España in Los Angeles, is one of the most striking icons of the expansion of the Spanish empire that occurred along the California coast more than 250 years ago.