Alviso Adobe Community Park

3465 Old Foothill Rd, Pleasanton, CA 94588, United States

Alviso Adobe Community Park is a7-acre (2.8 ha) park in the city of Pleasanton, California, USA. It is built around an adobe house built in 1854 by Francisco Alviso on the Rancho Santa Rita Mexican Land Grant. Alviso Adobe is a rare surviving example of early American adobe that was in continuous use until 1969. The building was registered as California Historical Landmark #510 in 1954, but most of the historic marker was later found to be incorrect. 

Construction of the park was initially planned to begin in 2000, but the city was unable to secure funding until 2007, when the $4.4 million project was finally started. The park opened to the public with a grand opening ceremony on October 25, 2008. Apart from the adobe, which is furnished as it would have been in the 1920s, the park contains a replica of the old dairy and interpretive displays of the Ohlone culture.

• Brief History

Built in 1854 by Francisco Alviso (1818-), the adobe was on the 8.894-acre (35.99 km2) land of Rancho Santa Rita, granted in 1839 as a Mexican land grant to Jose Dolores Pacheco. Rancho Santa Rita was surrounded on the north by Rancho San Ramon (owned by Jose Maria Amador, uncle of Francisco Alviso) and on the east and south by Rancho Valle de San Jose (owned by Juan and Augustin Bernal and their brother-in-law Antonio Sunol). Francisco Alviso’s father, Francisco Solano Alviso (1792-), was once the majordomo of Pacheco (ranch manager).

During the railroad boom of the 1860s, Rancho Santa Rita was subdivided into fifteen smaller sections of varying sizes. The Alviso Adobe became the center of the 200-acre (0.8 km2) farm overlooking the Amador Valley and was occupied by Francisco Alviso and his wife Maria Ysabel (1819-) and their ten children. Alviso sold the property and the land to J in 1872. West Martin, land speculator and then mayor of Oakland. Martin sold it back to Anthony Chabot, the “Water King” Census records indicate that the Alviso family continued to live there for nearly 30 years until the 1880s.

Subsequently, in 1881, it was acquired by the Contra Costa Water Company and used by a succession of different tenant farmers ‘ families. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 damaged the building, leaving large cracks in the walls and chimney. It was bought in 1919 by Walter M. Briggs, who started the Meadowlark Dairy, the first certified dairy in California. He had the building renovated and used it as a shelter for his workers. The adobe continued to serve this purpose until 1969, when the dairy moved to Tracy.