Costa Mesa adobe celebration looks back on early California

The Costa Mesa Historical Society offered free public tours and other activities Sunday at Estancia Park to mark 50 years of restoration and preservation of the park’s Diego Sepulveda Adobe.

The event, dubbed Early California Days, celebrated the history of the adobe, a museum that contains artifacts from its past as part of a Native American village called Lukup.

The site later was a station of Mission San Juan Capistrano and the property of Don Diego Sepulveda, a former alcalde of Pueblo de Los Angeles, the Allen family and the Adams family, for whom Adams Avenue is named.

In 1940, the property was purchased by the Segerstrom family, who in 1963 gave the site to the city of Costa Mesa as a memorial to the area’s early settlers.

In 1966, a committee of the Chamber of Commerce began work to establish a museum inside the adobe.

The interior of the museum represents four periods of California history — Indian, Mission, Spanish and Victorian.

For more information, visit costamesahistory.org.