San Pedro y San Pablo Asistencia
In 1786, the Franciscan missionaries established their outpost at the Ohlone village of Pruristac. Within four years, it was abandoned. The population had dropped from 300 to 25, devastated by infectious diseases including syphilis that spread through the mission system. The San Pedro y San Pablo Asistencia -- a sub-mission supporting Mission San Francisco de Asis -- lasted barely a decade as an active farming operation. Its three-wing plaza grew wheat, beans, corn, peas, barley, asparagus, rosemary, grapes, peaches, and quinces, all cultivated with native labor. Then the people who did the labor died, and the fields reverted to cattle pasture.
The Village Before the Mission
Pruristac was an Ohlone settlement in San Pedro Valley, part of the Ramaytush band that inhabited the peninsula. The village captain Mossues and leader Liquiique, along with their wives and daughters, were among those who went through Indian Reductions in 1782 and 1783, relocating as Mission Indians to Mission Dolores near the pueblo of Yerba Buena -- the settlement that would become San Francisco. Two men from Pruristac, given the baptismal names Hilarion and George, served as alcaldes at Mission Dolores until their deaths in 1807 during a skirmish with the Suisunes tribe. The asistencia was built on the site of their former home.
Four Years of Harvest, Then Silence
The mission outpost consisted of a chapel, granary, tack room, and several other rooms arranged around a central plaza. Construction proceeded quickly: by 1789, the complex included quarters for the mayordomo and the missionaries, plus a covered passageway that doubled as a kitchen. Crops diversified from wheat and beans to include barley, asparagus, rosemary, grape vineyards, and groves of peach and quince trees. Limestone was mined at nearby Mori Point to supply construction materials for the parent mission. But the agricultural enterprise depended entirely on native labor, and the diseases that swept through the mission system were catastrophic. By 1792, the facility was closed as a working farm and reduced to a cattle outpost.
Salvaged Tiles and Vanished Walls
After secularization of the missions in 1834, Governor Juan Alvarado granted the 8,926-acre Rancho San Pedro to Francisco Sanchez in 1839, including the asistencia's remaining buildings. Sanchez built his adobe residence at the site, possibly reusing bricks from the mission outpost. In 1894, roof tiles were salvaged from the property and installed on the Southern Pacific Railroad depot in Burlingame -- the first permanent structure built in the Mission Revival Style. Today, virtually nothing remains of the original installation. A plaque in Sanchez Adobe Park depicts the former floor plan. The asistencia's physical legacy has been scattered and repurposed, but its human cost -- the collapse of the Pruristac community -- remains the central fact of its short existence.
From the Air
Located at 37.59°N, 122.49°W in San Pedro Valley, Pacifica. The site is within the bounds of Sanchez Adobe Park on Linda Mar Boulevard. San Francisco International (KSFO) is approximately 8 nm east-northeast. Half Moon Bay Airport (KHAF) is 7 nm south.