Branciforte

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Branciforte or as it was named, Villa de Branciforte, was a secular pueblo established by the Spanish in 1797 on the eastern bluff overlooking the San Lorenzo River. It has now been incorporated into the city of Santa Cruz, California.

[edit] History

It was founded under the direction of California Governor Diego de Borica and the viceroy Miguel de la Grúa Talamanca y Branciforte, marqués de Branciforte with the intention of luring retired soldiers and settlers to the province of Alta California. From its very inception the Villa met with great obstacles. The funds were not adequate, and the enterprise failed to attract any retired soldiers. In their stead, a motley group of convicts who were banished from New Spain formed the initial group of colonists, and although the missionaries at Mission Santa Cruz protested bitterly against this pueblo being situated so close to their domain, the town received the official backing.

When the first settlers first arrived, they found nothing of what they had been promised. Expecting to find the town already built to accommodate them, they found they had to build their own rough dwellings with little tools or provisions. In the end the Villa de Branciforte never resembled the neatly laid out plans for streets and buildings its planners envisioned. Furthermore, it never lived up to its expectations, and in 1802, the town itself lost the support of the crown, and supplies ceased to arrive.

Ever since the first days, many of its residents, whom the narratives and chronicles, denounce as "lazy" and prone to vices and crime, decided to move to other, more prosperous settlements like the Pueblo of San José. There was also constant problems with the missionaries at the adjacent Mission Santa Cruz over grazing rights, and the corrupting influence of the settlers on the neophytes at the Mission. For the first few years the population actually declined.

In 1818, when the pirate Hippolyte de Bouchard threatened to attack the California coast in support of the independence struggles raging in the Americas, the residents of Branciforte were reluctantly called upon to defend the Mission against sacking while the padres and neophytes took flight in other Missions further inland. When Bouchard arrived, he did not sack Santa Cruz but instead it was the residents of Branciforte who looted and stole from the mission even the clothes from the saints adorning the church. The missionaries and neophytes came back to find the whole place ransaked, but it was soon discovered who the culprits had really been. This event deepened the mistrust both the communities held for each other.

The Branciforte Adobe is the only remaining building in Santa Cruz from this period.