El Pueblo Viejo de San Diego: Old Town San Diego’s Mexican-Era State Historic Landmarks

El Pueblo Viejo de San Diego:
Old Town San Diego’s Mexican-Era State Historic Landmarks
Hiding in Plain Sight, Part 5
By Alexander D. Bevil, California State Parks Historian II (Retired)
July/August 2026

The following California State Landmarks (CHLs) reflect the years 1821 to 1847 when San Diego evolved from a military outpost to a Mexican pueblo.

California Historic Landmark (CHL) No. 830: Old Town San Diego State Historic Park
Comandante Francisco María Ruiz reportedly built the first adobe house outside the confining walls of the Spanish presidio, approximately one-third of a mile southwest of the Presidio hill. In time, other retired soldiers erected homes around their former parade ground, often using building materials taken from the presidio. Like Ruiz, they also had larger homes on vast cattle ranches. Their fortunes changed after the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as the town shifted from an agrarian economy to one primarily mercantile-based. Many adobes deteriorated. In 1968, California State Parks acquired several surviving historic adobes surrounding the plaza and incorporated them into a new state historic park.

CHL No. 74: Casa de Carrillo
Presidio comandante Francisco María Ruiz reportedly built this house next to his pear garden in 1810 for his cousin and fellow soldier Joaquín Carrillo and his large family. On April 15, 1829, Ruiz’s godchild Josefa Carrillo—with the help of her cousin Pio Pico, a caballero and future Mexican governor of California—eloped with ship captain Henry Delano Fitch to Chile. After her brother Ramón Carrillo sold the property, the large casa deteriorated, leaving only a single-room structure. Given landmark status on December 6, 1932, local businessman George Marston repurposed the building in 1931 as the Presidio Hills Golf Course’s clubhouse. He later deeded both the building and the course to the City of San Diego.

CHL No. 53: Casa de Estudillo
José Antonio Estudillo, another former presidial comandante and ranchero, completed this large U-shaped adobe in 1829. Neutral during the Mexican-American War, Estudillo was elected as San Diego County’s first assessor in 1850. Businessman John D. Spreckels, who purchased the property in 1906, hired architect Hazel Wood Waterman to repurpose it as an end-of-line electric trolley destination. Its manager and later owner Tommy Getz falsely advertised it as “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” referring to the popular novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. California State Parks slowly began to discredit that claim after it acquired the casa in 1968.

CHL No. 72: Casa de Bandini
In 1829, Estudillo’s respective father and brother-in-law, Dons José and Juan Bandini, erected this neighboring L-shaped adobe, which became the center of Old Town’s economic, social, and political life. Don Juan loaned his house to Commodore Robert F. Stockton as his headquarters. Here, on December 9, 1846, Stockton received an urgent message to rescue General Stephen W. Kearny’s men trapped near San Pasqual. Although Bandini continued to hold political offices after the war, financial losses forced him to sell the casa. In 1869, stage line operator Albert Seeley added a second story and converted it into the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

CHL No. 71: Casa de Machado y Silvas
Retired Corporal José Manuel Machado constructed this single-story adobe house for his daughter María Antonia and her husband José Antonio Nacasio Silvas around 1843. It became known as La Casa de la Bandera (The House of the Flag) because in October 1846 Doña María reportedly hid the Mexican flag that had flown over the plaza in her home as American forces reoccupied San Diego. After the war, she converted her casa into the Commercial Restaurant.

CHL No. 63: Plaza, San Diego Viejo (Washington Square)
By 1834, the plaza was the center of social, economic, and political life in the Mexican pueblo. Indeed, a combination town hall and jail once stood inside the plaza’s northwest corner. Previously the scene of numerous rodeos and fiestas, on July 29, 1906 a reported 4,000 attendees witnessed the placement of a bronze plaque on a stone boulder to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the first raising of the U. S. flag over the plaza.

CHL No. 73: Casa de Stewart
Retired presidial Corporal Don José Manuel Machado built this adobe for his family in the 1830s. In 1845, newlyweds John (Jack) C. Stewart and Rosa María Machado, Don José’s youngest daughter, moved into the adobe. In Two Years Before the Mast (1840), author Richard Henry Dana mentions Stewart as the second mate of the Alert when the ship gathered hide off La Playa in 1834. Stewart, along with his wife and eleven children, hosted Dana in their overcrowded casa during the latter’s 1859 visit. In 1973 California State Parks acquired and eventually restored the adobe into a house museum.

CHL No. 75: The Site of the Casa de Cota
Spanish-born Baja California cattle rancher Juan Cota built this small, gable-end adobe around 1835. His grandson Alejandro Cota stated in 1932 that tenants reported “a troubled ghost” haunting the casa. The alleged ghost may have been troubled by the adobe’s deteriorating condition, which led to its eventual vacancy and demolition around 1942.

CHL No. 60: Casa de Lopez
Juan Francisco Lopez, the son of retired soldier, politician, and ranchero Ignacio Lopez, built La Casa Larga (the Long House) around 1835. On July 29, 1846, while Don Lopez’ granddaughter Prudencia was drawing water from the nearby river bed, she noticed a troop of Frémont’s Volunteers marching toward her. Alarmed, she proceeded to run through the streets shouting (in Spanish), “Here come a million Americans!” Among the casa’s other residents were Juan Matias Moreno, Mexican Governor Pío Pico’s secretary; and Father Antonio Ubach, who used one of its rooms as a chapel. Another room reportedly served as the town’s first school.

SLIDE SHOW

CHL No. 74: Casa de Carrillo. On the night of April 15, 1829, a young Pío Pico, the future governor of California under Mexican rule, helped his cousin, the beautiful 19-year-old Josefa, slip away to meet her future husband, 30-year-old Henry Delano Fitch, at his ship anchored off La Playa. Their scandalous elopement to Valparaiso, Chile was met with equal parts contentious indignation and romantic admiration throughout Spanish California. Courtesy SOHO collection

CHL No. 63: Plaza, San Diego Viejo (Washington Square). Designated a CHL thirty-six years before it became part of the state park, the plaza was a city park incongruously named Washington Square, an unsubtle indication that it was located within an “American” town. Photo by Alexander D. Bevil

CHL No. 75: The Site of the Casa de Cota. Photograph of an exterior view of the Cota Adobe showing signs of disrepair in Old Town, San Diego, c. 1925. Picture file card reads "Built by the Cotas, a descendent was Francisco (Chico) Cotas, last color bearer in the Mexican California Army in 1874, surrendered to Fremont at Cahuenga." Courtesy University of Southern California. Libraries and California Historical Society Collection, 1860-1960

CHL No. 60: Casa de Lopez. Nothing conveys a nearly 200-year-old building’s historic association with Mexican California more than a prominent overhead entry sign bearing an anthropomorphic langosta (lobster) and wooden surfboards flanking the entrance as a backdrop to mounted food photos. Photo by Alexander D. Bevil

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