Los Rios
adobe
adobe1
sjc
little house
modesta
dino
Sometimes you think you know a place but then discover some secret little part of it you'd never even noticed. That happened to me last week in Orange County while I was waiting for Monte, who had a meeting in San Juan Capistrano.
It had rained in the morning, but now was sunny in a humid, almost tropical way, and the sky held all sorts of pretty clouds...in short, a beautiful day....so I wandered. Across the railroad tracks from the Capistrano depot, I came upon a neighborhood that time seemed to have forgotten, a raggedy and charming little island of old adobes and ramshackle houses and garden shrines and secret back streets. It's a historical district called Los Rios, and I later learned that it is in fact the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in Orange County.
Forty adobes were built here in the late 1700s (of which three remain) to house Acjachemen/Juaneno Indians who worked at the mission. One of the surviving dwellngs, the Rios Adobe, has been occupied for over 200 years by descendants of the original owner.
A few images from my walk:There's also a wonderful nursery, a museum in a Victorian era house, and various shops and cafés. In a local history exhibit, I came upon a photo of Modesta Avila (1869-1891), who once lived and raised chickens here, and I read her sad story.
Modesta dared to challenge the Santa Fe Railroad, then the most powerful corporation in California, objecting to the train running through her mother's land, its newly laid tracks just fifteen feet from her door. She demanded $10,000 and was supposedly promised compensation but none was forthcoming. In anger and frustration, she hung a line of laundry across the tracks, and although she removed it before the train came through, she was arrested and convicted of a felony and sentenced to three years in San Quentin, where she died at the age of 22.
In the photo I’ve posted, her eyes seem haunting, her expression still defiant.
Lest we leave on such a somber note, I'll post one more photo, representing a different sort of defiance...and get a good look, because earlier this month the San Juan Capistrano city planning commissioners voted to remove this 40-foot long, 13-foot tall dinosaur who has recently taken up residence at the Zoomars Petting Zoo in the heart of the Los Rios neighborhood. He's a fiberglass Apatosaurus, in case you're wondering, and he was purchased and installed by the owner of the zoo, who plans to appeal the vote.