Horses for Sale in Lafayette CA, Castro Valley CA

About Pacifica, CA

Before European settlers arrived, Pacifica was home to two significant Ohlone Indian villages: Pruristac located at San Pedro Creek near present-day Adobe Drive, and Timigtac on Calera Creek in the Rockaway Beach neighborhood. Pacifica is the location of the oldest European discovery of the San Francisco Bay. An expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà sighted the bay by climbing the hills of Sweeney Ridge in Pacifica on October 31, 1769. Before then, earlier Spanish maritime explorers of the California coast (such as Juan Cabrillo and Sebastian Vizcaino) had missed the San Francisco Bay because heavy fog so frequently shrouded the entrance of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean (the Golden Gate). Sighting the San Francisco Bay accelerated the Spanish colonization of Alta California because it was the only large, safe, centrally located harbor on the Alta California coast.