Posts Tagged With: San Juan Bautista State Historical Park

The Gilroy Museum in the old Carnegie Library

Salinas, CA

Is my memory poor? It seems as if more places are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays than I remember from when we first start our major travels in 2013. It might be COVID; museums, parks, arboretums etc have less money and are hesitant to liberalize the number of days and hours they are open. In any event, traveling on a constant basis means the pickings might be slim on Mondays and Tuesdays. For instance, we are in Salinas CA which has a national John Steinbeck Center which is not open today (Tuesday). Or Monday for that matter. 10 AM seems to be the default opening time. Didn’t it used to be 9 AM? Then, of course there is the weather. We are less likely to go hiking on solid rainy days.

So we deal with it and some days the traveling may be less than others. Today was one of those days. Constant rain in the morning meant our planned adventure at Pinnacles National Park was delayed. The park said to expect muddy paths with the potential for falling trees and mudslides. Rain tonight will increase that a bit but we are going there tomorrow anyway since Wednesday through Friday look to have a window of sunshine that we need to take advantage of.

So inside activities are needed. We start at the historical museum in the town of Gilroy with a sizable population of 58,000. The museum is housed in an old Andrew Carnegie library building. We discover that Gilroy has a robust agricultural base and a large sense of self-worth. In various spots throughout the museum, Gilroy is proclaimed as, or proclaimed as once having been: Hay and Grain Capital of California, the Tobacco Capital of the U.S., Dairy and Cheese Capital of America, Prune Capital of America, and Garlic Capital of the World. We had heard about garlic. As it turns out, China grows 75% of the world’s garlic but California is tops in the U.S. and Gilroy is the center of garlic growing in CA. Christopher Ranch is the largest single grower of garlic in the U.S.

We stopped at a local garlic store and I tried some garlic ice cream. In small doses, not too bad.

The museum does have a reasonable display about the history of the various American Indian tribes in the area. A nice map detailed where various tribes in the area lived. The exhibits also mentioned the tragic deaths caused to Native Americans by the Spanish missions, the illegal loss of land by the secularization of the missions when transferred by Mexico from the Catholic Church, the sale and indenturing of Native American children, the selling of state bonds to finance expeditions to kill Native Americans, and the impact of papal bulls (proclamations with the effect of law) issued by the Catholic Church to justify European conquering people in the New World and Africa.

From Gilroy we drove 15 minutes to San Juan Bautista, home to a mission and to a state historical park. The focus of the state historical park is not the mission, but the buildings that represent the development of California between 1859 and 1890. This is a time when California has become a state and the Mexican ranches are becoming agricultural lands owned by settlers from the American East. At San Juan Bautista, the Mexican owner has welcomed Irish immigrants, survivors of the infamous Donner party, to the area. They intermarry and begin new traditions.

From top left, the hotel dining room, the stables and home, the women’s parlor at the hotel, hotel at bottom

Other immigrants from Italy arrived and established a hotel, well known and frequently visited due to its location on several stage coach lines. Seven to eleven stage coaches would arrive daily. Unfortunately, the railroads never came to San Juan Bautista and the town slowly lost importance. It must not have helped that the 1906 SanAndreas quake left cracks in many of the town’s buildings. Today San Juan Bautista is a community with a population of 2,000 and a pleasant, old style downtown.

The bar area in the hotel at San Juan Bautista

Ed and Chris, Salinas Feb. 28