The Lost Frontier
By Brendan Doherty
Photographs By Nancy Ericsson
American Archaeology, Fall 1998
 Spanish Colonial chapel at the Presidio |
Long before the 1849 gold rush, Hispanic soldiers and their families helped forge a new civilization in Northern California. Adobe ruins under the Presidio of San Francisco - a US Army post for nearly 150 years - are helping historians better understand 18th- and 19th-century military life on the Bay.
Excavations of the Spanish Colonial chapel at the Presidio (above) occupy a small corner of the recently decommissioned U.S. Army base (below), located alongside San Francisco Bay.
When fog hovers in between the eucalyptus trees and red brick buildings, obscuring the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and most of the Bay City, it's easier to imagine the Presidio of San Francisco as it would have appeared more than 200 years ago, when a small Spanish outpost toiled at the edge of the New World.
 Recently decommissioned SF Presidio U.S. Army base |
To the casual visitor nothing is left of those early days, long since wiped away by American history. The U.S. Army arrived on the scene in 1847 and built its own frontier post, which by 1994 had evolved into a base with more than 800 buildings, a national cemetery, a historic airfield, and a museum. That year the presidio, decommissioned as an Army base by Congress, became a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This year the site began a new transition as its management shifts to a public trust organization, the Presidio Trust.
 Charr Simpson-Smith is field director of Cabrillo College's research at the Presidio. |
The first significant find occurred five years ago when the removal of an underground fuel tank-part of the base closure cleanup-exposed Spanish-era wall foundations. Water line and sewer repairs over the next two years uncovered additional features, and in 1995 the National Park Service began a long-term archaeological study of the site and surrounding area. Today Barker and archaeologists from Cabrillo College, Woodward-Clyde Consultants, the University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco State University of California at Berkeley, and San Francisco State University continue to document foundations and artifacts from the old Spanish fort. Gradually their discoveries are fleshing out the story of El Presidio de San Francisco-and are contributing to new views about the social and material history of the Spanish frontier.
"This place is important and relates to the overall history of the city and the region," says archaeologist Barbara Voss of the University of California at Berkeley. "The Presidio is a terrific example of how a colonial outpost unfolds. While most people think of the military as very regimented, this site was constantly changing. We have a general understanding, but there is a lot left to look at."
 Artifacts Found |
The historical record of El Presidio de San Francisco ("El Presidio") and its early in habitants contains numerous gaps, due in part to documents lost in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Most existing records consist of requests for supplies, food, and funding that went to Mexico. Letters from commandants detailing weather difficulties, supply shortages, and various calamities provide a limited picture of life in the area.
"The archaeology here is informing history," says Redmond Kernan, President of the Fort Point and Presidio Historical Association. "As we uncover more of the original foundations and better understand the size and significance of the presidio, historians may need to modify their views."
Established under orders from Captain Juan Bautista de Anza on July 26, 1776, El Presidio initially was home to 200 soldiers, settlers, and their families. Most settlers arrived not from Spain but from Sinaloa and Nayarit in New Spain, including a majority of mestizos (people of mixed Spanish/Indian/African ancestry) and criollos (people of Spanish ancestry born in the New World). The initial construction crew of two carpenters and 20 soldiers concentrated its efforts on the commandant's quarters, a warehouse for provisions, and a chapel, laid out in a quadrangle roughly 85 yards on each side.
 Artist's reconstruction of 1972 Presidio |
The Presidio in 1792 resembled this artist's reconstruction (above), based on a report by the acting commandant. The Spanish Presidio archaeological site, indicated by the brighter area (below), lies just to the northeast of the Officers' Club in this partial map of today's Presidio. "Settlers and families were left to build their own homes," Barker says. "For the first 20 years they were constantly rebuilding them, since the architecture used didn't fare well in the windy, wet climate." From its seaside location El Presidio governed and protected nearby Spanish missions and pueblos, and provided a show of force to foreigners. By 1812 the Russian American Company had settled as far south as Fort Ross and the Farallon Islands. Today Fort Ross is a state park about 90 miles north of San Francisco.
 Spanish Presidio Archaeological Site |
But carrying out their important charge wasn't easy for the Hispanic colonists. El Presidio was chronically underfunded and undersupplied, and its people depended heavily on the missions for food and supplies, especially after the outbreak of revolution in New Spain in 1810. While most soldiers drew a pension, few had arms. "It wasn't a welcomed assignment," Barker says, summarizing those first two decades. "It was a Spanish version of Dances with Wolves." The 1796 arrival of the Catalonian Volunteers, an infantry unit from Spain, increased the need for both housing and supplies at the fort. Over the next 15 years the soldiers expanded walls, remodeled the chapel, and replaced thatched roofs with red tiles. Out of necessity trade began with the Russians at Fort Ross, as well as with British and American ships, despite a strict embargo imposed by the Crown.
The Mexican army assumed brief control of the fort following the 1821 Mexican Revolution, but in 1835 Commander Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo all but abandoned the site for a new military headquarters 60 miles to the north at Sonoma. By the time the first 7th New York Volunteers arrived in 1847, they found "the old Mexican barracks in a rather dilapidated condition." Nevertheless, the old quadrangle became the administrative center of the U.S. Army's Presidio reservation until the 1890s. In the 1870s the present-day Officers' Club served as headquarters and remained an adobe structure with a few wood frame additions. A 1934 renovation further preserved the adobe structure by encapsulating its walls and roof under new construction. Today the adobe walls, visible behind a small pane of glass in the Officers' Club, are the only standing remains of the original fort. They constitute the largest architectural remnants of any of the four presidios of Alta California.
 Cattlebone Fragments |
Were it not for the recent flowering of archaeological investigation here, researchers say, the full story of El Presidio's humble beginnings would be as incomplete as those adobe relics. Little would be known of El Presidio's structural evolution, or the daily life of its inhabitants, beyond the limited facts of history.
Ceramics found (below) include majolicas, lead glazed earthenware, Asian porcelain, and British earthenware. Wet screening at the site yielded these cattlebone fragments (above right), possibly resulting from marrow extraction during food preparation.
 Ceramics Found |
"Although records of the Presidio document some of the economic and staffing changes brought about by the shifts of power, little archival evidence exists that shows the effect these events had on the architectural layout and land-use patterns in the Presidio," says archaeologist Rob Edwards, director of Cabrillo College's Archaeological Technology Program, which for the past three summers has conducted a field school at the site.
Archaeologists believe the most accurate map of the early fort was made by Presidio Commandant Hermengildo Sal in 1792, a sketch of roomblocks surrounding a central plaza, with outer walls measuring 106 by 110 yards. Beyond that year, however, information on the actual architecture and layout of El Presidio is sparse in historical documents. Among the questions posed by researchers: How did the design change with the arrival of the Catalonian Volunteers, the Mexican Army, and the first wave of U.S. soldiers? And how did the site's physical hardships and changing political influences affect interaction with the outside world?
In 1992 a new report on the Presidio National Historic Landmark incorporated archaeological resources for the first time, prompting archaeologists to develop a predictive model for the location of buried features. A year later the model paid off when Army contractors removed an underground diesel tank. Barb Voss and Vance Bente of Woodward-Clyde Consultants discovered pieces of red roof tile and rock foundation in the soil hundreds of feet from the quadrangle depicted in the 1792 map.
 Kendra Carlisle |
"We were in the area looking for Civil War-era deposits," Voss says. "But there were features that were definitely Spanish. When we did some test excavations it was clear that this early fort was a much bigger structure than we thought." Barker began test excavations in 1995 and uncovered additional features to the south of the Woodward-Clyde discovery, including collapsed adobe walls under an 1882 officers' quarters. Following ground-penetrating radar studies that tested assumptions about buried structures, fieldwork in 1996 verified at least two distinct construction episodes: a quadrangle corresponding roughly to the 1792 map and a stone foundation approximately two-and-a-half times larger than the 1792 plan.
Artifacts and pottery sherds found in trash pits and around the foundations have provided a wealth of new information. A few artifacts suggest the presence of Native Americans at the fort and may lead to a better understanding of how they interacted with the Spanish colonists-beyond the documented fact that local Ohlone, Coast Miwok, and other groups were the primary labor force under Spanish and Mexican rule. Chinese porcelain and English and Russian ceramics have confirmed El Presidio's trade with outsiders in the early 19th century.
Crew leader Kendra Carlisle (above) reviews records with Cabrillo College student Peter Nelson. UCSC graduate student Jennifer Boyd (below) picks through one of several trenches at the site.
The 1996 field season also marked the discovery of the fort's 1780 chapel on the southern side of the original plaza. The building's unique architectural proportions made it relatively easy for archaeologists to identify.
"We even found a small silver crucifix in the southwest corner of the chapel remains, which the Spanish may have used to sanctify the building," says Edwards, who along with Charr Simpson-Smith led the Cabrillo College field school that made the find. "Students also found wall plaster in place at the junction of the floor and the southwest corner of the chapel." The chapel ruins reflect two building phases, accordinto Edwards. As one of the first structures erected at El Presidio, the chapel was the heart and soul of the early community. It comes as no surprise that the building was significantly enlarged as El Presidio expanded.
 Jennifer Boyd |
"They went from a small chapel to a larger one, and they built massive walls," Edwards says. "This is where they went from the tentative structure to the more permanent."
Because of its unique architectural status within El Presidio, the chapel may become the reference point which archaeologists use to investigate the remainder of the fort. The officers' quarters adjacent to the chapel site cover an unknown amount of the ruin; but because the building was constructed on a post foundation, Edwards and Barker believe nearly all of what's underneath is intact. In July of this year, excavations by the Cabrillo field school attempted to evaluate the condition of the chapel at the time of abandonment and document construction history and techniques.
"We go into these sites with a few questions," says Cabrillo's Charr Simpson-Smith, "and we answer some of them, but the chapel left us with even more questions."
Future efforts at the site will focus on site mapping, documenting artifacts, and studying El Presidio's interdependence with nearby Fort Ross. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have begun to examine Presidio "outliers," the residential and industrial sites that developed outside the Presidio quadrangle, eventually including the city of San Francisco.
Barker's other goal is to continue to educate the publish about a period of history obscured-like the foundations now buried under asphalt and concrete-by the 150 years of American progress. "This area didn't begin with the gold rush," he says. "There is still a lot to learn about the nature of frontier life."
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