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A book in review: James B. Alexander’s Sonoma Valley Legacy
George McKale
James B. Alexander, in his Sonoma Valley Legacy, reports upon the histories of 70 adobes constructed around Sonoma Valley. This book is fun and loaded with not only historical accounts, but photographs! What catches my eye is the evolution of architectural styles represented through time in a single building. In the 1870’s, for example, the Sonoma Barracks looked far different from the painted white stucco/adobe we see today, but was remodeled into a Victorian style building serving as a tenement and general store. Alexander addressed the construction of adobes in Sonoma by breaking down their construction dates into five distinct categories: Sonoma’s Mission Era, Mexican Garrison Era, Mexican Civil Pueblo, U.S. Occupation Era, and Ranchos.
During Sonoma’s Mission Era, Alexander reports on over 26 adobe buildings associated with the mission. For the most part, most of these buildings are no longer standing. The variety and number of buildings associated with the mission attest to the geographically widespread nature of Mission San Francisco Solano. Today, given the current boundaries of the mission, there is an apparent bias, as many see Mission San Francisco Solano as a small enclosed property. The mission between 1823 and 1833 was much more expansive. The Mexican Garrison Era includes Mariano Vallejo’s entrance into Sonoma and the founding of the pueblo. Buildings within this time period include his Casa Grande and forty-foot tower, the Sonoma Barracks (El Cuartel), Salvador Vallejo’s Post Commandancia and the Reeger Adobe among others.
When driving our children to school, shopping for groceries, grazing around the Plaza at Sonoma’s fine eateries and watering holes, we pass by the often inconspicuous adobe houses built long ago. Inconspicuous as many are now covered in stucco or wood and painted, thus when J. N. Bowman wrote his Adobe Houses in the San Francisco Bay Region, he claimed only 11 to still be standing in Sonoma in 1951. His counts were on the low side. Most were constructed during the Mexican Period and early gold rush days. It took about 1,000 bricks to construct a small adobe, 2,500 for a two-room dwelling, and many thousands of bricks to erect large churches and the dozens of buildings found on early ranchos.
One adobe dwelling resting quietly at 143 W. Spain Street, a half block west of the Plaza, documented as razed by Bowman, is the Casteñada Adobe. This tiny adobe is far from razed and represents the history of an era long gone. Its history is tied back to the very founding of our City, when it was known as the Pueblo of Sonoma. The house was constructed around 1842 by Native Indian labor for Salvador Vallejo, the General’s younger brother. Captain don Juan Casteñada, private secretary to Mariano Vallejo, bought the adobe from Salvador in 1850.
Captain don Juan Casteñada arrived in California from Texas when he became a Commandante to Baja California. In 1838 he was involved in the military support of Carlos Carrillo, and a year later became secretary to Mariano Vallejo. In 1839, Vallejo sent Casteñada to Mexico to solicit funds to support the Sonoma Garrison. Casteñada was not successful in bringing badly needed monies to the failing garrison. Vallejo later described Casteñada as “friendly” but not too forceful.
Alexander provides a concise dialogue on Salvador as well, who constructed numerous buildings in Sonoma, Napa, and Lake Counties. Captain Jose Manuel Salvador del Mundo Vallejo was known as “the hot-tempered, hard-drinking, brutal, womanizing, unprincipled Don Salvador”. This is the stuff history is made of. In 1836, Salvador became Captain in charge of the Sonoma Garrison and around 30 years later became a major in the Union Army during the Civil War.
If only these historic buildings could talk. It’s the history of their owners that also intrigue the rogue historian. What secrets lie within their thick mud-laden walls? Sonoma Valley Legacy provides a great introductory background into Sonoma’s early history and the many characters that shaped the town we live in today.
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