Bay Area History

The history of California and specifically the Bay Area and the Peninsula is still being written.  Commonly taught narratives from 4th grade and beyond are changing as we understand more about the process of colonization, resistence, and persistence of local cultures over time.  Any resource rich location on the globe will always have multiple histories and stories, written from so many different perspectives.

Our job is to give people the most complete and broadest history, and maybe, just maybe, provide some sort of explanation for why things happened the way they did.  We can only do that if we manage to describe peoples' experiences from their alternate perspectives.  

What I am hoping to do on this page is start the conversation with you about these ideas so that we can all understand the archaeology from a similar perspective.

We can talk about several periods, which I will fine tune over time in the class.

Native American Period 20,000/10,000 BP- 1542AD

European Exploratory - 1542-1769

Mission/Spanish Colonial 1769-1821

Mexican Period 1821-1849

USA Period (1850-present)

[More to come - just started this page 12/5/23]

In terms of the history around Foothill College, we tend to focus on Rancho La Purissima Concepcion which was granted to Jose Gorgonio in 1840 by the Gov of Mexican California.  Jose and his son, Jose Ramon, were Ohlone tribal members.  The rancho abutted Rancho San Antonio along present-day El Monte Rd and Moody Road.  Significant for our research is the area to the west of Rancho San Antonio and south of La Purissima Concepcion.  It was unclaimed land and is now where Hidden Villa is situated.