From Indigenous and Mexican roots to modern immigration debates, California’s past offers a broader understanding of American identity and citizenship.
I have a hard time imagining San Francisco when it was founded 250 years ago. Few people inhabited the hilly, foggy landscape. Mission Dolores, officially Misión San Francisco de Asís, was a small chapel made of adobe — the only original intact building from that time.
Construction on the Presidio was just beginning. Most of the inhabitants were Indigenous people and some Spanish families who came this far north in Alta California because they had few options elsewhere.
San Francisco was more of an undesirable, remote village than the bewitching metropolis it is now…