CALVARY CEMETERY Donor

News from The Monterey County Historical Society July 2003 Museum Construction Set to Resume The next phase of construction at the Mon- The next part of this construction phase terey County Historical Society’s Boronda His- will take place inside the museum building, and tory Center is about to begin. will include portions of the front wing and the This phase will start with landscaping, road mezzanine. This will allow us to begin storing and parking lot installation, and construction of our collections in the museum building, and to a perimeter fence. reopen the Lagunita School to visitors. Founded December 22, 1933. Incorporated 1955. P.O. Box 3576, Salinas, CA 93912. (831) 757-8085. Hilltown Ferry Crossing By Robert B. Johnston The State of California, and Monterey County espe- port of Monterey. Fathers Crespi and Gomez hoped the cially, is rich in material for the study of local history. river would be named El Rio Eleazerio after the saint; Hilltown ferry crossing from earliest California begin- but the soldiers, dreaming of the luxury they might never nings to the present has been associated in some degree taste again, suggested El Rio de Chocolate. A compro- with most of the historic developments of the State mise led to naming this erratic waterway El Rio de Santa through the many individuals, great and not so great, fa- Delfina. Other late comers called it El Rio de Monterey mous and infamous, who made use of this link in the lo- and El Rio de San Buenaventura before Salinas (after the cal transportation system. salt flats near the mouth) became the common and last- ing choice. Hilltown Ferry Crossing On the evening of September 30, 1769, Portolá and What and where is Hilltown? At the point where the his men camped along the river between Hilltown and Monterey Highway (the extension of Salinas’ South Blanco. Father Serra and others undoubtedly used the Main Street) curves to the right for a few hundred yards crossing at Hilltown before 1774, for Serra seems to before crossing the steel bridge, a general store and motel have passed by here on two historic treks by mule train. stand on the site of a very small community that has ex- In mid-July, 1771, the enthusiastic Franciscan proceeded isted for slightly over a hundred years, serving the travel- up the Salinas Valley to the Valley of the Oaks near er crossing the Salinas River on his way to Monterey. Jolon to found Mission San Antonio de Padua. A little Hilltown itself is located near the southeast corner of more than a year later, Serra set out up the Salinas Val- Rancho Nacional. Directly across the river is the north- ley by mule and on foot to reach Mexico City and report east corner of Rancho del Toro. This rancho extended in to the authorities. En route, he stopped one day, Septem- a southwesterly direction up the little valley of El Toro ber 1, 1772, to found the Mission San Luis Obispo de Creek, which flows between low hills at the foot of a Tolosa. Governor Pedro Fages had followed this path mountain of the same name. Hilltown almost marks a only a few months before to the Canada de los Osos for corner common to four ranchos established along the “the most celebrated bear hunt in the history of Califor- Salinas under Spain and Mexico -- Buena Vista and nia.” Fages and Father Crespi were the first to open the Llano de Buena Vista joining El Toro and Nacional along route of the present-day highways from Monterey to San their eastern boundaries. No doubt even before the first Juan Bautista and on to the San Francisco Bay by way of white man came to the valley, the Indian hunter crossed the site of Salinas, and they may have been the first to at this natural fording place. It was been known succes- use a river crossing at or near Hilltown. sively as El Paso del Quinto, Estrada Crossing (after one Captain Juan de Anza, Founder of San Francisco, in of the rancheros), Salinas-Monterey Crossing, Hilltown 1774 and again in 1776 when arriving on his great (after one of the first American farmers to locate here), marches from Mexico to Monterey, followed the trail of and Riverside. The earliest Spanish explorers followed Portolá down the Salinas Valley but turned from the riv- the Salinas River along the bank opposite Hilltown by a er at Buena Vista before reaching Hilltown crossing. On route which hugs the feet of the Santa Lucia Mountains Sunday, March 10, 1776, Anza’s colonists rode their last from Soledad to its junction with the crossing at Hill- day into Monterey from near Somavia along the west town. This is the River Road of today. bank of the Salinas in “almost continuous rain” after Gaspar de Portolá, first governor of California, and a eighty-eight days of actual traveling, covering almost courageous but half-starved company of forty to fifty sol- fourteen-hundred miles. Governor Rivera and grey-robed diers and devoted Franciscan padres, looking more like Father Palou, and later Captain Anza with his leather- “skeletons” than courageous explorers, rode their mules jackets, crossed the Salinas plain, passing the sites of or walked down the Salinas Valley in late September, Salinas and Natividad on their way from Monterey to 1769. These first white men to view the future “Salad search for suitable locations for the mission and the pre- Bowl of the Nation” were not in the mood for singing sidio of San Francisco. From this time forth, thousands hymns of praise. They sought the elusive but marvelous would cross the Salinas by one or another ford near Hill- town on foot, on horseback, in ox-cart, in wagon and carriage, threading their way through the willow-grown Note dry bed, splashing through the yellow water, or riding the This essay was written in approximately 1958 and flatbottom, cable-guided ferry boat, though at times all donated to the Society with Robert B. Johnston’s re- crossings were blocked by high water. search collection. Between 1776 and 1797 (from the year of the Dec- 2 laration of Independence to the end of George Washing- Rancho was held by José Maria Soberanes and Joaquin ton’s second term as President of the United States), the Castro under an “occupancy permit” issued by Governor six most important missions north and east of Carmel Borica in 1795. The rancheros and vaqueros crossed and were established, including San Francisco, Santa Clara, recrossed the Salinas, driving their stock before them. Santa Cruz, Soledad, San José del Guadalupe, and San San Carlos Mission “supplied the cattle for the new San Juan Bautista. These settlements, destined to grow into Juan Bautista Mission.” Violence and dissension some- prosperous communities and cities, had determined for times interrupted the peaceful scenes near Hilltown. the most part the transportation patterns across the Sali- Grizzly bears destroyed many cattle in the Chamisal nas plain from Monterey before 1800. Fermin Francisco Ranch and Toro Creek area across the river from Rancho de Lasuen was second only to Junípero Serra as presi- Nacional; and in 1795, Indians wiped out four ranchos dents of the missions of New California. They each along the Salinas though Buena Vista escaped. founded nine missions out of twenty-one. The year 1797 In late November, 1818, Monterey was evacuated by was an especially busy one for Lasuen as four stations Governor Sola, and all the civilians and troops, except were dedicated from San José, San Juan to San Miguel “one Molina—too drunk to flee” from the marauding and San Fernando. The Salinas crossing must have seen freebooters led by Hypolite Bouchard, the Frenchman many Grey Robes coming and going to and from head- sailing under the rebel flag of Buenos Aires. The quarters at Carmel. refugees, including all four-legged animals, no doubt Meanwhile, Monterey was visited three times be- crossed the river near Hilltown, some turning up the val- tween 1792 and 1794 by George Vancouver, leader of an ley to Soledad, while the troops, stock, and a few civil- English expedition sent to negotiate the Nootka dispute. ians went to the headquarters of the Rancho del Rey November 19, 1794, Vancouver joined “in a party to the (Nacional). By early 1819, most of the inhabitants were valley through which the Monterey River [Salinas] back rebuilding the capital. flows.” He turned aside at Corral de Tierra to view “the With the inception of the Mexican regime in 1822, most extraordinary mountain I have ever beheld.” Pro- the pastoral or “golden age” of the ranchos began. Nu- ceeding on by way of the Salinas [Hilltown] crossing, he merous grants of land were made in the Salinas Valley observed the “extensive valley…composed of luxuriant during the twenty-five years before the American con- soil” to be “a natural pasture, but the long…dry weather quest. Trade in hides and tallow and the sea otter and had robbed it of its verdure.” beaver attracted many foreigners to seek fortunes and ad- Rancho Nacional from its southeast corner at Hill- venture in the land of the easy-going Californians. Trips town extended from the river onto the plain covering from the Salinas to Monterey by way of Hilltown or most of the present site of Salinas. This was originally nearby crossings increased as ox-carts creaked under the one of the Ranchos del Rey where the San Carlos Mis- loads of smelly hides (the “California banknotes”) of- sion at Carmel and the presidio of Monterey pastured fered in exchange for merchandise aboard the Yankee “herds of cattle, bands of horses, and flocks of sheep.” ships in the Port of Monterey.

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