Juana Briones - San Francisco's founding mother (original) (raw)

Location: Lyon Street, Marina district, S.F. Site: Lyon Street stepsStephanie Wright Hession

One of the most popular workout sites in San Francisco is the Lyon Street steps, which run from the crest of Pacific Heights on Broadway to where Lyon dead-ends between Vallejo and Green streets. All day long, joggers huff and puff up these steps, which feature a spectacular view of the Palace of Fine Arts and the bay.

At the bottom of the steps, there is an odd indentation in the adjoining Presidio wall, a notch occupied by six houses. That notch in the otherwise ruler-straight Presidio boundary is a tangible reminder of one of the most remarkable and inspiring figures in San Francisco history - Juana Briones.

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Briones was born in 1802 at the Villa Branciforte in Santa Cruz, a short-lived retirement home for soldiers established by the Spanish crown. Her ancestors came up from what is now Mexico with the Portola and Anza parties, in what are called the "California Mayflower" expeditions.

In 1812 her family moved to the Presidio, next to El Polin Spring - which today is one of the few remaining springs in the city, a magical place now superbly restored and curated. The waters of the spring were believed to confer fertility, and they seem to have worked: Briones and her husband, a soldier at the Presidio named Apolinario Miranda, had seven children.

In 1833, Briones' husband was granted land 1,000 yards east, on another spring called El Ojo de Agua Figueroa. Briones and her family moved there, just outside the Presidio borders - thus becoming the first non-Indian San Franciscans to live somewhere other than on the Presidio or at Mission Dolores. The waters of the spring were visible until 1912, and it is said that they still run under the site of her long-vanished house.

Built in North Beach

At some point, Briones built a second home 2 miles to the east, an adobe farmhouse near the present-day intersection of Filbert and Powell streets, a few steps from Washington Square.

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The area would soon be called North Beach, the name given because the bay used to come up to Francisco Street. But the earliest map of the area, drawn by pioneering trader Jacob Leese, refers to the waterfront as la Playa de Juana Briones - the Beach of Juana Briones.

It is unclear just when Briones moved to the adobe farmhouse. According to her biographer, Jeanne Farr McDonnell, she may have done so as early as 1826. That would have made her the first resident of the hamlet of Yerba Buena - and would make her deserving of being called the founder of San Francisco. That title is generally bestowed upon the British sailor William Richardson, who built a lean-to at what is now 823 Grant Ave. in 1835.

Apolinario Miranda turned out to be drunk and abusive, and at some point Briones left him. This was no small step in the patriarchal, hierarchical world of 19th century colonial California.

Illiterate, undaunted

Briones was further handicapped by the fact that she was illiterate. But this dauntless woman overcame these obstacles and soon opened a dairy ranch in what is now Washington Square, selling milk to the crews of visiting ships and helping runaway sailors.

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A young Boston sailor named William Thomes came by Briones' ranch every morning to get milk. "The lady and I struck up quite a friendship," he recalled 50 years later. "She always welcomed me with a polite good-morning, and a glass of fresh milk. If the men had had some of the energy of that buxom, dark-faced lady, California would have been a prosperous state, even before it was annexed to this country, and we would have had to fight harder than we did to get possession."

Briones was an extraordinary woman in many ways. She adopted an Indian girl, evidence of her egalitarian spirit. She was also a curandero , or healer, using herbs and other natural ingredients that she had learned about from her mother and from Indians. An early Yerba Buena settler, William Heath "Kanaka" Davis, said she had saved his life when he had a "neuralgia in his head."

Saving a life

When she was caring for a sick Indian girl and the fire in her house went out, she saddled her horse and galloped to the Presidio to get a burning piece of wood, reportedly saving the girl's life when a chill would have been deadly.

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Briones was also an accomplished businesswoman. She was meticulous about maintaining clear title to her lands at a time when many of her fellow Spanish-speaking Californians were being cheated by Americans.

Valley move

In 1844, she bought a large cattle ranch in the Santa Clara Valley and ran it successfully. The rammed-earth adobe she built there stood until 2011, when its owners finally won a long court battle and demolished it.

At the end of her life she moved to Mayfield, in what is now south Palo Alto. She died in 1889 at the age of 87, having lived under three flags and seen the hamlet she helped found become the eighth-largest city in the United States.

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A bench on the northeast corner of Washington Square, once her dairy farm, commemorates Juana Briones. It is fitting that she is remembered in one of the most beloved places of a city where Briones was, if not its official founder, certainly its mother.

Trivia time

Last week's trivia question: What unusual structures became death traps during the great San Francisco fire of 1850?

Answer: Prefabricated metal houses imported from Britain. Supposedly fireproof, the buildings melted during the fire, and their doors could not be opened.

This week's trivia question: What San Francisco squatters used a ship armed with a cannon to defend their claims?

Editor's note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Every Saturday, Gary Kamiya's "Portals of the Past" will tell one of those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco's extraordinary history - from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach, to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Gary Kamiya is a freelance writer and Bay Area native. His book, "Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco," has just been published by Bloomsbury. E-mail: metro@sfchronicle.com

Aug 23, 2013|Updated Aug 24, 2013 8:30 a.m.