History
The Ohlone Indians lived in the area for over 3,000 years prior to the arrival of the Spanish. A large village, known as Partacsi, was located in the general area. In March, 1776 Juan Bautista de Anza led the first overland expedition to San Francisco Bay from Monterey through this area. In de Anza's diary on March 25, 1776, he states that he "arrived at the arroyo of San Joseph Cupertino (now Stevens Creek), which is useful only for travelers. Here we halted for the night, having come eight leagues in seven and a half hours. From this place we have seen at our right the estuary which runs from the port of San Francisco." A prominent hill between Permanente and Stevens Creeks is referred to as "De Anza's Knoll" and marks the location where the explorer first spotted the Bay.
Governor Alvarado granted Rancho San Antonio to Juan Prado Mesa in 1839. Mesa had been a soldier at the San Francisco Presidio since 1828. In 1853, William A. Dana, a former seafarer and merchant, purchased the Rancho. In 1923, the Catholic Church purchased what had become the Snyder Ranch and in 1926 and constructed Saint Joseph's Seminary (which was badly damaged in the 1989 earthquake and demolished) and the Maryknoll Seminary. The Maryknoll Seminary, with its oriental motif, stands east of the park across Cristo Rey Drive. The Santa Clara County Parks Department purchased 130 acres in 1977 and another 35 acres in 1981 from St. Joseph's Seminary. The Park's improvements were constructed in the early 1980s with additional improvements completed in 1993.
Read more about this topic: Rancho San Antonio County Park
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But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)