SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : City Plans to Celebrate Its History

For Tony Alarcon, the 197-year-old Montanez Adobe on Los Rios Street is more than a historical monument. He once called it home.

When the Alarcon family arrived in San Juan Capistrano by rail from Arizona in 1924, they settled for a year in the adobe, which was old even then.

“I can remember getting off the train and walking right across the street to this house,” said Alarcon, now 72, as he wandered Friday through the cacti, palm and sycamore trees on the adobe’s grounds just a few feet west of the train depot.

Alarcon’s former home will be highlighted next week when the city celebrates Historic Preservation Week, May 12-18. The city’s recognition coincides with a national historic week celebration, and this year is also the 25th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act.

San Juan Capistrano, home of the 215-year-old mission, is a city that prides itself on its heritage. But Alarcon said historic preservation is actually a recent practice.

Alarcon can remember the not-so-distant past when the adobes, wooden cottages and narrow streets that make up the 40-acre Los Rios Historic District were considered eyesores that literally and figuratively fell into the description “the other side of the tracks.”

“There used to be a fence right next to the tracks, like someone was trying to cover up the area,” he said.

Less than 20 years ago, the city began clearing a 50-foot-wide road at Los Rios Street, said Bill Hardy, a district homeowner. That was when the district’s residents banded together and to demand a halt to the destruction.

“They were going to roll right through here and knock all these homes down,” Hardy said. “But a group of people here--Jim Ito, Dan Rios and some others--convinced the City Council that was not a good thing to do.”

In the mid-1970s, the district was finally set aside for special study, said Pam Gibson, a longtime city resident and author of a book on the city’s history, “Dos Cientos Anos en San Juan Capistrano.”

Since then, the homes have been protected or rehabilitated into museum pieces, she said.

“At that time, the O’Neill Museum was a rotting wooden structure,” Gibson said. “But that study resulted in recommendations that the area be included in a historic district.”

Today, the area is protected with as much care as the famous mission. A cultural heritage commission created in 1975 watches over everything in the city with historic value, as does a local activist group, the Friends of Historic San Juan Capistrano.

Not a shovel of dirt is overturned without the permission of the Los Rios Review Committee. The district’s historic homes are part of the National Registry of Historic Places.

Other adobe structures are scattered throughout the city, but just three of the original 40 adobes that once lined Los Rios in the 1790s are still standing. Along with the Montanez Adobe are the Rios Adobe--considered the oldest home in California--and the Silvas Adobe.

Maintaining the adobes, which are little more than mud and straw with a wooden frame and a roof, means constant attention, said Marilyn Thorpe, a member of the cultural heritage commission. But she is not complaining.

“It’s an ongoing, everyday responsibility,” Thorpe said. “But we accept that. Living in a historical community may be work, but it’s always interesting.”

Guided walking tours of downtown and Los Rios District are held every Sunday at 1 p.m. They convene at El Peon, a shop across Ortega Highway from Mission San Juan Capistrano.