Gaye LeBaron: Carrillo Adobe in Santa Rosa has had a long, sad wait for salvation

Santa Rosa's beginnings - its “roots,” if you like that analogy - are beside a creek in a neglected orchard on a busy street across from the town's swankiest shopping area.

Protected in recent years by a nick-of-time roof and a chain link fence, the ruins of the Carrillo Adobe stand as a symbol of a community's inability to honor its history.

But, glory be! This insult to our ancestry is about to come to an end.

In the not too distant future (and that's the best I can do about timing) the owner of the sad old orchard will preserve what remains of the building and create a small park around it and along the south bank of Santa Rosa Creek.

Barry Swenson Builders, a San Jose-based developer, bought the property - just a shade less than 14 acres - from the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa two decades ago.

The firm's preservation of the adobe ruins and the park development is not a gift. It is a negotiated requirement for approval of the company's 140 market-rate condos and 25 low-income units in Creekside Village, facing Montgomery Drive.

City Hall, it seems, is as weary of waiting for the adobe's salvation as we are.

Despite misunderstandings, there will not be a fund drive to buy the parkland, nor taxpayers' money spent in preservation. No city budget line item is needed to make it happen. It will be, however, a city park.

The conditions of approval recorded in 2007 - just before the economic downturn of '08 stopped everything - call for the developer to create the park, according to city specifications, and deed it to the city. With that deed may come a kind of “forever” designation for the historic site.

Last month, at a Sacramento meeting in the state's Office of Historic Preservation, the adobe and surrounding area were declared eligible for the prestigious National Register of Historic Places.

While there is no firm date set for groundbreaking on the condo project, Jim Fain of Carlile Macy, the Santa Rosa engineering firm involved, assures me that, after the nine-year hiatus caused by the economy, things are proceeding apace.

The adobe will be preserved with a stabilization plan created in 2004 by Gilbert Sanchez, a Santa Cruz architect who specializes in mission and adobe building preservation.

Panels telling the building's story are being written and designed, with city park department supervision.

At first glance, there would seem to be a “here we go again” component to the news that the Carrillo Adobe site has been declared eligible for the National Register.

There have been so many failed efforts to save Santa Rosa's “first house,” that each new announcement seems to foreshadow failure.

But the cohort of local advocates, including Stacey De Shazo, architectural historian and chair of Santa Rosa's Cultural Heritage Board; archaeologist Alex DeGeorgey; Native American scholar Nick Tipon; and founding-family descendant Kelly Carrillo, went to the Resources Commission meeting and succeeded in gaining not only state recognition for the site but also approval of eligibility for the prestigious National Register.

Citing advances in technology that reveal the history that lies below the ground as well as in the ruins, the Register application reads like one of those English novels that begins with the Britons and the Saxons and ends with Elton John.

There is even talk of asking for a World Heritage Site designation.

Meanwhile, eligibility for the Register means that, once the property owner agrees, the adobe site will have a permanent place on the list that protects important (read that word again, “important”) places from destruction.

We are presuming that the city, once it takes possession, will sign the agreement and then nobody, no way, no how, is going to bulldoze the ruins of Santa Rosa's “first house” into a heap.

After 70 years of starts and stops, it is a relief to have the value of the site recognized.

A friend points out you could toss a walnut across at least six layers of history in that orchard on Montgomery Drive.

Maybe the root analogy would be better. A tap root works its way down to the earliest layers, where Native American burials mingle with the rich soil of the creek's floodplain.

It was a crossroads, we are told, in prehistory, a place where two main trails met, one leading from the central valleys to the coast, the other the north-south route trod by the Coast Miwok, Suisun, Wappo and Southern Pomo.

Where Spanish soldiers in armor frightened the Indians, marching from the Presidio in San Francisco north to see what the Russians were up to in Bodega Bay. Where Spanish padres from Mission San Rafael preached the gospel to Native Americans and may have, if the legend has basis, baptized an Indian girl in the creek on the feast day of St. Rose of Lima and named her “Rosa” and the creek “Arroyo de Santa Rosa” to commemorate the occasion.

It is also the spot where widowed Maria Carrillo claimed a land grant of 8,800 acres, having traveled El Camino Real from her San Diego home in the 1830s to take up a new life with her younger children near her daughter Benicia, whose husband, Mariano Vallejo, was the military governor of the entire Frontera del Norte.

Where Vallejo's younger brother Salvador helped her sons create her adobe, with Indian labor. Where her son, Jose Ramon, cut a colorful figure, fighting grizzlies and defending his valley against the American Bear Army.

Where her daughter Juana and husband, a Scot named David Mallagh, opened a tavern and store in the adobe after Dona Maria died and the Americans discovered the gold of California.

Where one corner of the building became the first Santa Rosa post office. Where the three H's, Hoen, Hahman and Hartman, built the store and “public house” into a proper trading post - the departure point for wagons filled with trade goods that Hartman took into the hills of Lake County and Mendocino to supply settlers, opening other trading posts along the routes, where more new towns, like Cloverdale, grew.

Where a greedy San Francisco landlord named Walkinshaw raised the rent on the adobe so high that Hoen and Hahman moved downstream, bought land from Julio, another Carrillo son, laid out a plaza, built a store and talked Julio into filing an official map of the “Town of Santa Rosa.”

Where the Hahman family planted prunes and walnuts as Santa Rosa advanced as an important farm town. Where the adobe, no longer fit for dwelling, made an acceptable prune dryer and packing shed, as well as a shelter for farm equipment. Where the Diocese of San Francisco decided to build its second church in town, choosing the crossroads corner, naming it St. Eugene's and getting the beat-up adobe in the bargain.

Where the church held the land for 60 years, long after St. Eugene's became the cathedral for a new diocese. Bicentennial Committee members tramped over the orchard, looking for the foundation of a west wing that had vanished long before, making futile plans to save what was left as the town observed the nation's 200th birthday.

Where schoolchildren made adobe bricks to mend the damage. Where Carrillo family descendants and interested community members formed the “Friends” of the building and did indeed “save” it by building the roof and fencing it away from vandals. Where Santa Rosa High students, marshaled by their teacher, Dave Franzman, cleared berry vines and picked up trash and studied the history. Where several hundred Santa Rosans turned out last spring when the Historical Society of Santa Rosa arranged a “show-and-tell.”

Where, at long last, the Carrillo Adobe Park will tell its stories to a curious public.

All those stories. So many layers.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Kelly Carrillo was part of a group that obtained state recognition for the Carrillo Adobe and approval of eligibility for the National Register. Her first name was incorrect an in an earlier version of this story.