Juana Briones de Miranda - Early Residence

Early Residence

A remnant of her early rancho home is in the foothills above Palo Alto, California at 4155 Old Adobe Road, two blocks west of the intersection of Arastradero Road and Foothill Expressway. Although it contained a structure that dated from the early twentieth century, two walls that were in the oldest corner of the home exhibited the original rancho home's construction. These walls were historically significant, as they preserved a rare construction method: infilling a crib of horizontal redwood boards with adobe. This technique provided her dwelling with the excellent insulating characteristics of adobe, while protecting that building material from erosion problems during the rainy season, and destruction by earthquake, two problems with traditional adobe construction. Other than the unusual method of using materials, the original home exhibited the familiar layout of the traditional adobe: a strip of connected rooms with an external corridor. Current owners of the house, Jaim Nulman and Avelyn Welczer, seek to demolish the house and build a new one in its place. The Friends of Juana Briones oppose the demolition. As of 8 June 2007, the Santa Clara County Superior Court hadn't decided the issue.

Juana Briones sold most of her rancho to the Murphy family, who came to California with Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party in 1844. She died in 1889 in nearby Mayfield (now part of Palo Alto, California). She gave the remaining portions of her rancho to her children, who bore their father’s name, Miranda. Her footprints on the local landscape include the house, Juana Briones Elementary School, Juana Briones Park, and several street names incorporating either Miranda or first names of her children.

Juana Briones, like many early Hispanic women of California, has been overlooked by traditional histories, but she was mentioned in the following sources:

• Jeanne Farr McDonnell, Juana Briones of Nineteenth-Century California
• Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California
• J.N. Bowman, “Juana Briones de Miranda”, Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, September, 1957.
• Florence M. Fava, Los Altos Hills, 1976.
• More recently, she was profiled in a Radcliff Institute exhibition and related article titled “Enterprising Women” Harvard Magazine, January–February 2003
• 1860 CA Census has her in SC County page 436 Fremont Twp as age 56 she is listed as Juana Miranda dwellin 1747