San Francisco's Visitacion Valley

By Visitacion Valley History Project

Rancho Cañada de Guadalupe, La Visitacion y Rodeo Viejo was named in July 1777 by a party of Spanish priests and soldiers who lost their way in heavy fog while en route to the Presidio. Now called Visitacion Valley, this area was the only Mexican land grant within San Francisco deeded to an Anglo. Windmills pumped water to irrigate the fields of early settlers’ cattle farms, nurseries, and vegetable gardens, leading to the nickname “Valley of the Windmills.” Over the years, however, the pastoral scenery gave way to a mix of housing and commerce, and today Visitacion Valley is one of the city’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439630969

Visitacion Valley History Project

The Visitacion Valley History Project has collected this intriguing volume of images and stories from people of all ages who have lived and worked here. These encompass the early days, the industries like Southern Pacific and Schlage Lock that once thrived here, the community centers and improvement clubs, the charming bungalows of Little Hollywood, Joseph Eichler�s towers and townhouses, and newly planned developments that will have a lasting effects on the Valley. Together these add up to one of San Francisco�s most distinctive areas, one that deserves recognition in the present as well as safeguarding for future generations.

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INTRODUCTION

For hundreds of years, our southeastern sector—one of San Francisco’s three valleys, tucked beneath the San Bruno Mountain range—was inhabited solely by Native Americans who hunted in the hills and fished in the nearby bay. But with the July 2, 1777, discovery and naming of Visitacion Valley by Spanish friars and soldiers en route to the Presidio, the land was claimed by the Catholic Church and used to graze herds of livestock. In 1834, the now-Mexican government took back the land that Spain had granted to the church and awarded it instead to prominent Californios. One such grant, the Rancho Canada de Guadalupe, La Visitacion y Rodeo Viejo, was awarded to Jacob Primer Leese, a trader from Ohio married to a sister of the powerful Gen. Mariano Vallejo.

After 1848 and the American annexation of former Mexican territory throughout the West, acreage began to be sold off. Among the earliest landowners in Visitacion Valley were Francois Pioche, a bon vivant whose French Gardens specialized in roses, and Henry Schwerin, a German whose extensive acreage supported a dairy farm, a nursery specializing in ferns and tulips, and honey bees. Other Europeans, including numerous Italians and Maltese, established truck farms, whose irrigation systems led to the neighborhood’s being nicknamed the Valley of the Windmills.

By the 1870s, industry had come to the Valley: William Ralston’s silk ribbon factory, followed by several breweries (including Mission Brewery, noted for its steam beer); two quarries; a gas plant and a fertilizer company; and the Southern Pacific Railroad, which filled in the bay for its tracks and tunnels and from which American soldiers embarked for overseas duty during World War I. Schlage Lock was a major employer between 1925 and 1999, and Silvestri’s statuary has been a business neighbor since the 1960s. The Five, Six, and Seven Mile Houses, named for their supposed distance from the original city hall at Portsmouth Square, offered lodging and recreation to both travelers and San Franciscans over a period of many years. With business came transportation, evolving from the original one-track streetcars that cost 5¢ each way, to the MUNI buses that replaced them, to the light rail system now under construction.

In 1905, the Reis-Paul Tract sold lots for $125 throughout the Valley—$1 down and $1 a week. The Sunnydale and Candlestick Cove housing projects were erected for World War II defense workers. Noted developer Joseph Eichler’s 1960s plan for luxury housing in two 20-story high-rises evolved instead into Section Eight housing at Geneva Towers, imploded in 1998 and replaced by the attractive townhouses known as Heritage Homes. Both the Visitacion Valley Community Center, spearheaded in 1918 by beloved neighborhood leader Florence Friedman, and the more recent John King Senior Center, now offering a childcare center and 91 assisted living units, continue to meet a variety of neighborhood needs. The classrooms of the Valley’s two elementary schools, as well as those at the middle and high schools, are also filled to capacity, as approximately a third of our residents are age 18 and under.

Local churches include the Church of the Visitacion, founded by the Valley’s Catholics in 1907. In 1952, its fourth and current building was erected on what was once the six-acre estate of Peter Burnett, California’s first governor, and subsequently the San Francisco Auto Camp, the city’s first motel. St. James Presbyterian was founded in 1906; Julia Morgan, the famed Hearst Castle architect, designed the present building in 1923. In 1954, Valley Baptist on Raymond purchased its building, erected in 1919, from the Catholics; today Sunday morning services are in English and the afternoon ones in Vietnamese. More than 50 percent of the Valley’s current population is comprised of those of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage, and the Valley’s rich diversity is further reflected in the ethnic congregations who worship here, including those at Korean First Presbyterian, Indian Baptist, Iglesia El Espiritu Santo, Visitacion Chinese Baptist, and others.

Nearly 230 years after the Spanish travelers celebrated their discovery of this beautiful valley by saying mass, using a huge rock as an altar, our community retains its original name and spelling. Although the area has changed in countless ways, the Valley of the Good Neighbor still harkens back to the past. Where herds of livestock once grazed on our windswept hills, we have the Cow Palace. Landscaped greenways and community parks have taken the place of dairy farms and nurseries. Although the Valley no longer runs around to the sound of Southern Pacific’s whistle, residents eagerly await the opening of the new light rail system along Bayshore Boulevard. Industry no longer defines the neighborhood, but the willingness of neighbors to help neighbors remains as strong as ever. And yes, The Rock that served as an altar in 1777 still stands, strikingly linking the past with the present!

Like the valley, Visitacion Avenue loops down from Mansell Boulevard to Bayshore Boulevard, and retains the Spanish spelling.

One

THE EARLY DAYS DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT

Before the Spanish claimed the land, the Yelamu tribe of the