Before it was San Bruno, what was it?

A number of years ago, I was asked to put up a display of some of my historic photographs. They were of several sizes, some quite large. I chose a 3-foot by 5-foot photo for a strategic location in the exhibit. It was an early photo of San Bruno, taken in the hills to the west, looking over the landscape to the east.

An on-looker came up to me and asked me why in the world was I putting up that particular photo. "There's nothing there!" he exclaimed. "My point exactly!" I replied. There were no houses in the photo, no businesses, only dirt paths for roads. There were wild-grass-covered hills in the west and creeks flowing to the east. There were few trees, except for the thirsty willows that always seem to crowd in along edges of a stream.

There was an abundance of wildlife, of course, although not apparent in the photograph: Bears, mountain lions, bobcats, deer, coyotes and smaller critters. And birds: Year-round residents like hawks and ravens, and twice-a-year flocks of geese and ducks, thousands of them winging through on their migrations, resting and feeding on the marshland and mudflats of the Bay.

Yes, that photo was sparse, but the history up to that captured moment was rich and storied. There was a civilization in the San Bruno area long before the European explorers thought they had "discovered" it. The Ohlone Indians were here. In the 1960s, an Ohlone settlement was excavated in the Crestmoor Canyon area. Mud and clay dwelling foundations were uncovered, as well as fragments of primitive utensils. More artifacts were discovered near San Bruno Creek on the site of the present-day Senior Center on Crystal Springs Road.

As early as the 1760s, the Spanish government had been exploring this area. By 1776, they had built a presidio and a mission at the northern tip of the Peninsula, San Francisco. A road was needed between that outpost and the established mission at Monterey. The first crude trail was laid out around the foothills south of San Francisco, west of the marshes along the Bay.

They named it El Camino Real. One of the Spanish surveyors in the 1770s was Lt. Bruno Hecate. His patron saint was St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order. That big hill, kind of in the way of the new road, needed identification, so Lt. Hecate did the honors and named it San Bruno Mountain.

Jose Antonio Sanchez was a soldier who trekked to the Peninsula with the Anza colonists in the 1770s. The Sanchez name and legacy are woven throughout the history of the Peninsula. He was granted provisional ownership of the 15,000-acre Rancho Buri Buri in the 1820s for his many years of service to the Mexican government, with ownership finalized in 1835. This Rancho extended from San Bruno Mountain in the north, east to the Bay, west to the coast range, and south to present-day Burlingame.

After Sanchez's death in 1843, his property was divided among his 10 children. But the land had to be inventoried before the estate could be settled, and it took so long to do so that California had by then become a state (1850) and almost all of the land was lost by the Sanchez heirs.

Much of what was left was sold by the descendants to pay off debts. By 1887, sale, resale and consolidation of land parcels created a situation in which the area, now known as San Bruno, consisted of a few large parcels of real estate owned by a handful of pioneer families. Prominent among these were the D.O. Mills, A.I. Easton and Sneath families.

Two significant businesses had been established: Richard Cunningham's San Bruno House on the San Bruno Toll Road (San Mateo Avenue), and the famous roadhouse called Uncle Tom's Cabin (14-Mile House) on the west side of El Camino Real near the intersection of San Mateo Avenue. A third business, the Jenevein Junction House, would be developed at the junction of El Camino Real and San Mateo Avenue.

The Silva family began their San Bruno connection when Custodio Silva emigrated from Chile. He worked for the Miller and Lux cattle empire in South San Francisco. In 1871, he purchased 30 acres from a Sanchez heir for $5,000 in gold. The property (present-day location) was located west of El Camino Real and the Tanforan Shopping Center, north of Interstate 380 and south of Sneath Lane.

Custodio was a well-known and respected horse dealer, running as many as a thousand horses at any one time on the Rancho location, as well as several other pieces of land he owned or rented. Horses were absolutely essential at that time for transportation, hauling and farming. He sold horses to local buyers, farmers and even the military. The Silva ranch was a gathering place on weekends, not only for his family, but others who came to watch wild horses being "broken" for riding and domestic use.

In 1875, Richard Sneath purchased 1,200 acres, bounded on the east by El Camino Real between present-day Sneath Lane in San Bruno and the Brentwood Addition in South San Francisco, west to Skyline Boulevard and north to Westborough Boulevard. He kept adding to his land until he owned almost 3,000 acres extending from El Camino Real to Sweeney Ridge and Pacifica. Sneath went into the dairy business.

Toribio Tanfaran (original spelling) and his wife Maria Valencia Sanchez (granddaughter of Jose Sanchez) used their 160 acres, south of Sneath Lane, for farming and raising their 10 children.

That photo in my exhibit so many years ago, the one my critic reviewed and concluded there was nothing there? Well, it's only nothing if you haven't put yourself into the picture. But if you can step through the frame, like Alice, and into the landscape of history-land, you'll find everything, not the least of which is opportunity. It's just a great story. It's something, really something when you finally "get" the picture.