This national park site is celebrating its 250th anniversary

Across the United States this year, people are making plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. While much of the focus on site-specific celebrations will be on the East Coast, there’s an important West Coast connection to 1776. Spain also established El Presidio de San Francisco in 1776 to guard San Francisco Bay from British, Russian, and French incursions into Alta California, a province comprising modern-day California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and parts of Arizona. 

The same year also marks the unofficial founding of San Francisco. In March 1776, the sites for both El Presidio and the Misión San Francisco de Asís (known as Mission Dolores) were scouted by a group from Mexico led by Juan Bautista de Anza during a colonizing expedition by the Spanish Empire. On June 29, 1776, a Catholic Mass was held at the mission site, marking the establishment of the city, a few days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The settlement began to grow around the mission, and was incorporated as San Francisco in 1850 during the California Gold Rush.

“The connection between San Francisco and the Presidio is more permeable, I think, than many people realize,” says Woody LaBounty, president and CEO of San Francisco Heritage, a nonprofit with a mission to preserve and enhance the city’s architectural and cultural identity. “With today’s boundaries of a national park, one might believe that it’s an entity apart, but there’s always been an active interplay between the Presidio and the city itself. The two are very much a single entity together.” 

Understanding history through preservation

El Presidio became the administrative center for the large colonial district of New Spain, stretching from the northern reaches of San Francisco Bay eastward into the Central Valley of California and south along the Pacific coast toward Monterey Bay. El Presidio was responsible for defending six missions, several pueblos, and many ranchos. The northern expansion of the Spanish Empire helped shape what was later to become the American West. 

“The Spanish Empire had a tenuous grasp of this region, as it was New Spain’s northernmost territory,” says Rob Thompson, federal preservation officer for the Presidio Trust, an agency that manages the park in partnership with the National Park Service. The Presidio changed hands in 1821 when Mexico gained its independence, and a few years later, it was first occupied by the U.S. Army in 1846.

Over nearly three decades, preservation efforts have revealed more of the Presidio’s history. “The depth and continuity of human history here began thousands of years ago with the Indigenous Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, to Spanish military and Mexican military, United States military, and now as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It’s all traced through the archaeological record, with each period as a chapter in the Presidio’s overall story,” says Thompson. The Presidio Trust manages more than 30 archaeological areas within the Presidio National Historic Landmark District, including the original Spanish Colonial site of El Presidio, as well as Indigenous shell mounds, cemeteries, and coastal forts. 

Archaeological artifacts and digging for history

“So much of our work is making the intangible tangible,” says Kari Jones, lead archaeologist for the Presidio Trust. “We like to think of ourselves as storytellers of long-term, deep histories—the longer arc of a story.” It’s not always easy for visitors to imagine how the Presidio expanded through the years, so Presidio Trust archaeologists help tell its story through their work behind the scenes and with public programs. Archaeologists also observe construction to ensure sensitive sites are protected during park improvement projects, including infrastructure, historic buildings, and open spaces. 

A recent excavation, spanning from 2014 through 2018, took place in Pershing Square across from the park’s oldest building, the Presidio Officers’ Club. Within the boundaries of El Presidio, the dig uncovered elements of the original Spanish colonial fort, and Presidio Trust archaeologists are still processing the artifacts. Only two to five percent of the site has been excavated to date. “We dig only when we have compelling questions that we want answered,” says Jones. 

The Presidio Trust’s collections include more than one million objects and their associated records, representing many periods in California’s history: the largest collections of Spanish Colonial- and Mexican Republican-era archaeological artifacts and associated records in California, documenting not only architecture but also daily life, foodways, and Indigenous-colonial encounters. The collections have gaming pieces, earthenware ceramics, Chinese export porcelain, a bone from the paw of a grizzly bear, and Minié balls—hollow-based bullets for muzzle-loaded rifles. The objects rotate through the Presidio History Exhibition in the Officers’ Club, which explores American history from a West Coast perspective. 

“Preservation isn’t about buildings alone because they’re nothing without the people,” says LaBounty. “And when you talk about people, you have to talk about all the elements of what makes us interesting and unique, and how different cultures come together at times throughout history.” San Francisco’s colonial history with Spain may differ from the history of the Indigenous people who preceded Europeans, as well as from the history of the 13 British colonies and the origin story of the United States, but together they are part of the complete story of the country.

(For the best wild swimming spot in San Francisco, ask the Dolphin Club.)