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This information comes from the Museum of the San Ramon Valley in 2001.

For untold centuries people have lived in the San Ramon Valley. They built their homes by the creeks, hunted in the valley and worshipped on the Mountain.

The First People
Today we call these first people Indians or Native Americans. While little information remains about the valley Indians’ specific culture, they would have had an intimate relationship with the land, a cycle of life which changed very gradually from generation to generation and a tribal organization which owned the rights to hunt, fish, gather and pray within clearly designated territories.

Living in village communities of 50 to 200 people, the rhythm of their lives was determined by one harvest or another. The Bay Area and the San Ramon Valley provided an enormous variety of foods. The Indians collected acorns, nuts and seeds, hunted birds, deer and elk, fished and gathered all kinds of plants. Sometimes large groups met for feasts and dances, including autumn festivals on Mount Diablo. Some people lived along the small streams and springs of the Mt. Diablo foothills either permanently or seasonally.

Sacred Mount Diablo
Mount Diablo was sacred to the valley Native Americans, as it was to other Indians who lived within sight of it. Many Indian tribes had traditions and creation accounts which featured the Mountain.

Each tribe had its name for the Mountain. The Costanoan speaking people south of Mount Diablo called it Tuyshtak. Early Spaniards named it Cerro Alto de los Bolbones (High Point of the Volvons) for the tribe which controlled the summit and eastern areas of the Mountain. The name Mount Diablo (Devil’s Thicket in Spanish) originated during a Spanish expedition around 1804. The superstitious Spanish soldiers called a willow thicket Monte Diablo when a group of Chupcan Indians from today’s Concord area escaped from them during the night. Later the name was transferred to the Mountain.

The Spanish Arrive
In 1772, the first westerners traveled through the San Ramon Valley. In his diary for March 31, Father Juan Crespi said that they “came to three villages with some little grass houses. As soon as the heathen caught sight of us they ran away, shouting and panic-stricken.” The next day he noted that the Valley had “level land, covered with grass and trees, with many and good creeks, and with numerous villages of very gentle and peaceful heathen. It is a very suitable place for a good mission.”

Spanish priests first recorded the names by which San Ramon Valley Indians were known to their neighbors: Tatcan and Seunen. The Tatcans were part of the Bay Miwork linguistic group. The Tatcans lived in the Alamo-Danville-San Ramon area in the watershed of the San Ramon Creek. The Seunens were Ohlone (Costanoan) speakers and lived south of today’s Norris Canyon Road in San Ramon and Dublin. A huge marsh around today’s I580-I680 interchange provided rich food supplies for Indians in that area.

In the fall of 1794 the Bay Miwok Saclans (from Walnut Creek-Lafayette) and Tatcans went to Mission Dolores in San Francisco. The Spanish weapons and their unusual gifts intrigued the Indians; some of them wanted to ally themselves with the powerful newcomers. But, only months after they moved to Mission Dolores, an epidemic swept the Mission. In the spring of 1795 a large number of Indians fled the Mission and returned home. For nearly ten years the Saclans and other neighboring tribes fought against the Spanish — “gentle and peaceful” no more.

The Rancho Era
In 1833 and 1834, just as the Missions San Jose and San Francisco were being prepared for secularization, two Ranchos were granted by the Mexican government in the San Ramon Valley. Both were called Rancho San Ramon. The pastoral rancho era began, with lands carved from former Mission areas. The cattle and sheep brought to these Ranchos were probably former mission livestock. Cattle hides and tallow provided the economic basis for the Ranchos.

Jose Maria Amador’s Rancho San Ramon eventually included over 16,000 acres, with his headquarters in today’s Dublin. He employed Indian and Mexican workers and developed an industrial center which produced leather goods, harnesses, wagons and furniture. Mariano Castro and Bartolo Pacheco, owners of the northern Rancho, lived elsewhere because of the aggressive Indian tribes in the area.

Mission San Jose became a parish church with no more temporal control over the Indians in 1836. The Indians scattered to work on the Ranchos and at the Pueblo of San Jose. Some more recent recruits went back to their tribes in the Central Valley. On a rancheria in Pleasanton, called Alisal, Indians from different tribes preserved their customs and traditional religious practices for many years.

When the Gold Rush began, it transformed California from a slow-paced Mexican territory to a lively and populous American state. Although the Indians controlled most of the inland area, thousands of miners invaded these traditional lands and decimated these tribes. California, which entered the Union as a free state in 1850, passed laws which allowed Indians to be enslaved by any white man. Children and young women were taken and sold as servants. Not until 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, was the so-called “Act for the Protection of the Indians” repealed.

There are 242,000 Indians in California today, more than 40,000 of them California natives. Most live in urban areas, but many are still part of over 100 traditional communities in rural rancherias and reservations.

The traditional Tatcan and Seunen tribes of the San Ramon Valley are no more. The artifacts unearthed next to creeks by bulldozers and the bedrock mortar holes on Mount Diablo remind us that a culture of great antiquity existed in this Valley just 250 years ago.

Sources:

Randall T. Milliken, An Ethnohistory of the Indian People of the San Francisco Bay Area from 1770 to 1810 (Berkeley: Dissertation, 1991).

A Time of Little Choice The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1810 (Menlo Park: Ballena Press, 1995)

Bev Ortiz, ” Mount Diablo As Myth and Reality, An Indian History Convoluted,” American Indian Quarterly (Fall, 1989)

This information comes from the Museum of the San Ramon Valley in 2001.

Louis Choris, drawings of “Three Bay Area Indians” and of “Weapons and Utensils,” 1816, courtesy of the Bancroft Library

Drawing of “The Padre Teaching Indians” and Village scene by Al Greger, 1996.

Conceptual Drawings of Mission San Jose by Jo Mora.

Written by Beverly Lane with thanks to Thelma Smith, Virgie V. Jones. Bill Fereira and Roxanne Wiedemann Lindsay. Underwritten by the City of San Ramon

A Community Begins.

Today San Ramon is a dynamic young city, one of California’s outstanding urban villages. It has a variety of homes, parks and stores and a major employment center — all in a setting of remarkable beauty.

It was once home to the Seunen Indians, Ohlone/Costanoans who lived adjacent to the valley creeks. After 1797 it was Mission San Jose grazing land; later it included Jose Maria Amador’s 16,000 plus acre Rancho San Ramon.

San Ramon Creek was named after an Indian vaquero, Ramon, who tended mission sheep here. In an 1855 land title case, Don Amador explained that “San” was added to the creek’s name to conform with Spanish custom.

American settlers first came to San Ramon in 1850 when Leo and Mary Jane Norris purchased 4,450 acres of land from Amador. Other early landowners were William Lynch, James Dougherty, and Major Samuel Russell. In 1852 Joel and Minerva Harlan bought land from Norris and built a house on what became the Alameda-Contra Costa County line in 1853.

Village Develops. San Ramon had several names in the nineteenth century. It was called Brevensville (for blacksmith Eli Breven), Lynchville (for William Lynch) and Limerick (for the many Irish settlers). The first village developed at the intersection of today’s Deerfield Road and San Ramon Valley Blvd. In 1873 when a permanent post office was finally established, it was called San Ramon.

During the 1860s the village became a hub of community activity. In 1864 a stage line established by Brown and Co. ran from San Ramon through the valley to Oakland. A church was dedicated in 1860, the general store was built in 1863 and students left their home-based classrooms to attend the San Ramon Grammar School beginning in 1867. Saloons, a jail, Chinese wash houses and blacksmith shops lined County Road No. 2 (later San Ramon Valley Blvd.).

With the arrival of the San Ramon Branch Line of the Southern Pacific in 1891, other changes took place. The name “San Ramon” permanently replaced references to “Limerick.” Crops and passengers could travel in and out of the area, no matter what the weather. Until 1909 San Ramon was the terminus for the line and boasted a two-story depot, the engine house and a turnaround for the locomotive.

In 1895 attorney Thomas Bishop acquired 3,000 acres of Norris land (after a divorce case in which Bishop’s law firm represented Margaret Norris). The Bishop Ranch raised cattle and sheep and was planted to hay, grain, diversified fruit crops and walnuts. Bishop Shropshire purebred sheep earned numerous awards. The Ranch was partially irrigated from an underground aquifer and at one point possessed the world’s largest single orchard of Bartlett pears.
The San Ramon Community Hall became the community’s center early in 1911, drawing farm and ranch families to dances, school programs and plays. It was still standing in 1960. Residents belonged to several community groups over the years, including the Danville Grange No. 85, Odd Fellows, SRV Farm Bureau Women, Rebeccas, Ramona Club, and Mother’s Club.

The San Ramon Community Hall became the community’s center early in 1911, drawing farm and ranch families to dances, school programs and plays. It was still standing in 1960. Residents belonged to several community groups over the years, including the Danville Grange No. 85, Odd Fellows, SRV Farm Bureau Women, Rebeccas, Ramona Club, and Mother’s Club.

There are many historic places in the San Ramon Valley which provide great family outings. Here are ten locations in the valley which you might enjoy visiting, all recommended by the Museum of the San Ramon Valley.

For a glimpse of PREHISTORIC SAN RAMON VALLEY, come to the Museum at 205 Railroad Avenue in Danville (open Tu-Fri 1-4, Sat 10-1). You will find a fossilized mastodon jaw (compliments of the U. C. Museum of Paleontology) which was found at the Blackhawk Fossil Quarry. There are other shell fossils and pictures of prehistoric animals to see.

You might have wondered WHERE IS THE SAN RAMON VALLEY? The valley extends from the County line on the south to the Walnut Creek border on the north. To see an artist’s tile rendition of our history, visit the Gateway Centre History Wall, at San Ramon Valley Blvd. and Alcosta in San Ramon. Walk south from Walgreen’s to find it.

Information on the GEOGRAPHY OF THE VALLEY can be found at the staging area which leads to Las Trampas Regional Wilderness. There are several interpretive panels at this parking lot and you may want to take a hike while you are there. Travel west on Crow Canyon Road in San Ramon, turn north at Bollinger Canyon Road and drive to the very end.

A quiet area in Hap Magee Ranch Park features the INDIANS OF THE VALLEY. This Alamo-Danville Park can be reached by walking east from the Iron Horse Trail at Camille Ave. or by driving to the north end of La Gonda Way. The Tatcan Indian commemorative site is on the San Ramon Creek side, just west of the Canine Corral.

While you are near Magee Park, you may want to read a plaque about Spanish EXPLORERS at the corner of El Portal and Danville Blvd. The first expedition came through the valley in 1772.

For information on MISSION AND RANCHO TIMES, you should return to the Museum and take a look at the original mission roof tile and Amador family pictures. There are also pictures on the wall and in the narrative frieze, plus a branding iron to handle. Ask to see the carreta model (wooden wagon the Spanish used).

And don’t miss the Alamo Cemetery at 130 El Portal where you can learn about EARLY PIONEERS. If you walk up the main path, you will see grave sites of these families: Podva (Ruby was a longtime Danville postmaster), Stone (Stone Valley Rd. was named for this family), Boone (Joel was descended from Daniel Boone) and Noia (pioneer Portuguese immigrant family).

EARLY SCHOOLS: A favorite trip for families is the Tassajara School House at 1650 Finley Road, east of Danville off Camino Tassajara. The 1889 school is owned and maintained by the SRV Fire Protection District, has picnic tables, and hosts the Museum’s third grade one-room school program each spring.

The valley’s AGRICULTURAL HISTORY is featured at Forest Home Farms Historic Park in San Ramon, 19953 San Ramon Valley Blvd. Look for an opportunity to take a docent tour or attend an event at the former Boone ranch. There are barns, ranch equipment, old tractors, plus the Boone House (1900) and the Glass House (1877).

For information on the valley’s TRANSPORTATION, pop into the museum again. Of course, the museum itself is a restored 1891 Southern Pacific Depot. Visitors can view several displays on the San Ramon Branch Line (steam and later diesel railroad), can learn about the short-lived electric railway (1914-1924) and buy some books about the valley’s rails and history.

Produced by the Museum of the San Ramon Valley 205 Railroad Avenue, Danville. Open Tuesday-Friday 1-4, Saturday 10-1. (925) 837-3750. All rights reserved, 2005.

Once again, the City of San Ramon qualified for the “Best Workplace for Commuters� for 2004. This means that the City met the National Standard of Excellence for commuter benefits, thereby cutting traffic and air pollution and improving our overall health and quality of life. Established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), this designation is a mark of excellence for environmentally and employee-friendly organizations. Transportation staff would like to thank all City employees for their contribution in vanpooling, carpooling, walking, bicycling, etc.

The City of San Ramon was awarded the EPA’s 2004 Bay Area’s Best Workplaces for Commuters Award. This spotlights employers that are committed to reducing traffic and air pollution and improving the quality of life for commuters.