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Title
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The Mountain View Colonia, WWII-1960
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Description
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The Hispanic roots of Mountain View stretch back to the Mexican land grant of Rancho Pastoria de Las Borregas of 8,800 acres that included lands in current Sunnyvale and Mountain View, granted to Francisco Estrada and his wife Inez in 1842. When the Estradas died in 1845 they left their land to Inez’s father, Mariano Castro. Castro sold the eastern half of the rancho, what is now Sunnyvale, to Irishman Martin Murphy, Jr. Murphy had arrived in 1844 and planted Santa Clara County’s first orchard on his newly acquired land. Castro died in 1856, leaving the Mountain View portion to his son, Crisanto Castro. Like other Mexican Californios, the Castros fought in the American courts from 1852 to 1871 to validate their land grants but lost most of it to squatters and lawyers fees. The Castro family remained in Mountain View until 1958, when they sold their remaining 23.5 acres to the City of Mountain View.
In the early 1900s Spanish immigrants arrived in Santa Clara County. Many who had worked in the orchards and canneries in the 1920s and 1930s moved to Mountain View, California, settling in the northern section of the city above the canneries, packinghouses and railroads. These included the Mountain View Fruit Packing Company, Clark Canning, and San José Fruit Preserving Company. Around 1920, the P.L. Sanguinetti Cannery in Mountain View was acquired by the Richmond-Chase Cannery, one of the largest in California.
Sharing a common language, the Spanish community welcomed Mexican immigrants who arrived in Mountain View during and after WWII. This would eventually transform the Spanish neighborhood into the Mountain View Mexican Colonia. In such a small town, Mexicans did not form a separate commercial district but melded cultural traditions and a shared language. St. Joseph Catholic Church became the heart of the Colonia, and during the late 1940s to 1950 Father Donald McDonnell encouraged the Mexican community to address their financial, economic, and social needs by creating Club Estrella as well as a community credit union. Club Estrella hosted annual church and community events for the entire Spanish speaking community. Increasing urbanization and highway expansion during the 1950s and 1960s brought major thoroughfares through the heart of the district and decimated the established Mountain View Colonia. Father McDonnell was assigned to the Mexican mission in Eastside San José in 1951, and helped establish the San José de Guadalupe Church and became a mentor to César Chávez.
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Scholar Talk
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https://vimeo.com/851761106
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https://vimeo.com/851760658
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https://vimeo.com/851761394
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https://vimeo.com/851760955
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Identifier
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B4SV Exhibit Topic Four: Slide 001
