One of California's original Spanish colonists, Luís Peralta received the first and largest Mexican land grant. His hacienda was the nucleus of the Rancho de San Antonio, which covered the sites of seven present-day East Bay cities and reached to the Contra Costa frontier. The rancho's first permanent adobe was located here, and the 1870 Italianate frame house is one of two remaining Peralta buildings.
Excerpted from the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park website:
Peralta Hacienda Historical Park in the Fruitvale district of Oakland, California, on the east side of San Francisco Bay, is a newly established six-acre community park.
The Peralta Hacienda Historical Park is one of the most significant historical sites in the East Bay. It was the first European settlement after the establishment of Mission San Jose and as such is the birthplace of Oakland. The focal point of the park is the 1870 Italianate Victorian farmhouse known as the Peralta House. A city and state landmark, the house is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Built by one of the original colonial families of California, the land where the house sits was part of the 44,800-acre Spanish land grant made to Sergeant Luis Maria Peralta (1759-1851) by the last Spanish governor, Don Pablo Vicente de Sol in 1820 in recognition of his forty years of military service to the Spanish king. Although he never lived there himself, his four sons built homes, took care of the family's livestock, and raised their families on the rancho Luis named Rancho San Antonio. Before the arrival of the Spanish, this land had been inhabited for approximately 15,000 years by native peoples, although by 1806 most of them had been removed to settlements called rancheros. Rancho San Antonio extended from present-day Albany to the northern part of San Leandro, and now includes seven modern cities.
The Peralta family was part of the group of settlers that arrived in Alta California in 1776 on the famous de Anza expedition. Seventeen-year-old Luis Maria Peralta accompanied his father, mother and three siblings. This group of settlers subsequently helped found the San Francisco Presidio, Mission Santa Clara, and the pueblo of San Jose.
In 1820, Rancho San Antonio was given to Luis Peralta with the requirement that he establish a permanent dwelling on the property within one year. His third son Antonio Marie Peralta (1801-1879) built the first adobe on the site in 1821. Sometime around 1828, Antonio brought his first wife, Maria Dolores Galindo to live on the rancho and the other three sons of Luis Maria Peralta soon followed. Eventually, Vicente, Domingo and Ignacio Peralta all built their own homes in various parts of the rancho in order to better manage the large grant. Jose Domingo Peralta (1795-1865), who had his own rancho in present-day Santa Clara-San Mateo counties, was convinced to move to Rancho San Antonio in the 1830s and eventually built an adobe in 1841 in the northernmost part of the rancho in what is now the city of Berkeley. The oldest son, Hermenegildo Ignacio (1791-1874), after retiring as alcalde in San Jose, came to the rancho in 1835 and established a residence in the southernmost area in present-day northern San Leandro. The youngest son, Jose Vicente (1812-1871), lived with his brother Antonio until he married and built his own adobe in 1836 in what is now the northern Temescal district of Oakland.
With their wives, families, landless Mexican laborers, and surrounding native peoples, the Peralta sons established the first Spanish-speaking communities in the East Bay. The Peralta Hacienda became the social and commercial center of this vast rancho. The Peraltas eventually had over 8,000 head of cattle and 2,000 horses grazing on the rancho, and built a wharf on the bay near the hacienda headquarters in order to trade the hides and tallow produced by their cattle. Foreign trade had developed as a result of the takeover of Alta California by Mexico in 1822.
As the rancho prospered, the Peralta brothers built newer and bigger houses. On the site of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Antonio built a larger adobe in 1840. Eventually, this site contained two adobes, and some twenty guest houses, and became an established stop for travelers along the Eastern branch of the El Camino Real. Annual rodeos and cattle round-ups, horse racing, games, and fandangos-part of week-long celebrations-often took place here. The sons and daughters of the first Spanish and Mexican settlers who were born in California became know as Californios and their heyday is called the pastoral era of California history. Native peoples whose ancestors had occupied California for thousands of years worked and lived on the rancho and made its economic success possible.