Something in the Water

If you find yourself in San Francisco and need a bit of fresh air and nature, head on down to the Presidio.  About a quarter mile from the Disney Family Museum, at the end of Mac Arthur Ave, there is a park with a picnic area, trails, benches even a restroom.  This is a birdwatcher’s hotspot, with loads of nuthatches, finches and chickadees.  There’s even blue heron and a snowy egret.  The year-round spring and the varied habitat make it a bird magnet.

The spring, called El Polin Spring, is a natural spring that was used by the Ohlone for hundreds of years as a fresh water source. 

A legend carried down through the generations says that all maidens who drink from El Polín during a full moon would have many children, including a preponderance of twins, and live in eternal bliss. 

The Army did some construction back in the 50’s, and made kind of a mess of it.  So the whole area, known as the Tennessee Hollow watershed, has been undergoing extensive restorations since 2011.

In 2008 Stanford University began doing archaeological excavations from a Spanish settlement next to the spring.  What they found was the remnants of the adobe house Marcos Briones built around 1810. 

Briones was an officer from the Presidio, who had accompanied Father Junipero Serra to California with the De Portolá expedition, the first land exploration by Europeans of California.  His wife, Ysabel, had come as a child with the de Anza expedition.   They helped to build Mission Dolores.  It is said that Yerba Buena, as S.F. was originally called, got it’s name for the healing tea that their daughter, Juana, made as a curandera. (healer)

Marcos and Ysabel were my 5th great grandparents.

This adobe house and the others beside it, were the first non-native homes in San Francisco.  In 1810 the population of San Francisco was less than 100.

Another adobe, belonging to Candelario Miramontes, is known to have existed in the same area.  Miramontes, also a soldier, owned the land that is now the TransAmerica pyramid building.  His mother, who had come with De Anza, left him this land, where she had started a potato, corn and pea farm.  Candelario sold the produce to ship captains when they came to port. 

This farm became a great meeting place.  When Captain Montgomery sailed in on the USS Portsmouth to capture Yerba Buena for the U.S in 1846, he went to Candelario’s land and raised the first United States flag on Candelario’s flagpole.  Candelario’s son, Vicente, rowed a boat out to Alcatraz and raised the first U.S. flag there.  The meeting place has been called Portsmouth Square ever since.  But it was Candelario’s garden first. 

Candelario married Marcos Briones' daughter, Guadalupe, who is said to have raised 21 children and lived to be 102 years old.  She is likely the source of the legend of El Polin Springs.

They were my 4th great grandparents. 

Vicente was my 3rd great grandfather.

In 1841 Governor Alvarado granted one square league (6,657 acres), named Rancho Arroyo de Los Pilarcitos, to Candelario.  His sons Vicente and Rodolfo took up residence on the rancho.  They built an adobe home on Pilarcitos creek, which separated their rancho from their neighbor, Tiburcio Vasquez. 

Miramontes and Vasquez became the founding fathers of San Mateo County’s first town. They called it San Benito. Other people called it Spanishtown.  Over the years it became known as Half Moon Bay.

In the early days, San Francisco had only small springs for fresh water. Water became scarce. People bid against each other to buy water. It was so precious, that it was sold by the barrel at outrageous prices.  

The Spring Valley Water Company was trying to solve this very critical problem.

In 1860, Melvin Halstead built a mill in Half Moon Bay, on the banks of Pilarcitos Creek. On Vicente and Rodolfo’s land, just behind Vicente’s large adobe home.

Immediately after the mill began to produce flour, representatives from Spring Valley Water came offering to buy the mill. The company was really interested only in the water rights.

Once the legal framework for water rights was completed, Spring Valley engineered an aqueduct system, and built two dams.  Most of the water that had been coming entirely to Spanishtown was now piped miles away - to San Francisco via a redwood flume powered by gravity.  That was only the first step.

Then they built San Mateo Dam, forming Crystal Springs Reservoir.

Needing still more water, they built the O’Shaughnessy dam and water transport system known today as Hetch Hetchy. They dammed water in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, piped it all the way across the state into Crystal Springs, and then on to San Francisco.  

Today, Pilarcitos Reservoir is part of the San Francisco regional water system serving the City of San Francisco and 1.7 million people in the Bay Area.  

Because the Spring Valley Company bought the mill, and the water rights to my great grandfather’s creek, San Francisco was able to sustain the population explosion after the gold rush.  Without water the city would have failed.  Considering how much the San Francisco area has shaped the history of the world, it puts into perspective how important this dam is to history.

I am inexorably tied to California.  My ancestors were some of the very first to live there.  The Briones and Miramontes families owned the ranchos that became Bolinas, Rancho Cucamonga, Malibu, Monterey, Livermore, Palo Alto, San Jose, Benicia, and many more. Many of the most important events in California’s history occurred on my family’s land and in front of their eyes.  

So, if you need a break in the city, go have a taste from the magical El Polin Spring.  Your great grandkids may thank you for it.