Native Beginnings. In aboriginal times a band of Amerindians lived on Santiago Harbor, connected by tidal sloughs to the southern part of San Francisco Bay. Their own term for themselves was Kiri-bei (Squirrel’s Children); they are now generally known by the Spanish name, Bellotas (acorns). Their linguistic affinities have not been established, but they spoke a different tongue than the Costanoan (Ohlone) Indians of the surrounding region, and according to their own legends were immigrants from a country to the east. They held that their patron god, Kiri (Squirrel) led them to this area as a refuge from some danger, so they called their village Tokobei (the children’s haven). Unlike most Indian villages of the region it was a permanent one; the hostility of their neighbors confined them to the vicinity, though the village itself was safe, as the Ohlone regarded it as taboo ground. Despite their circumscribed circumstances, the Bellotas lived relatively well: the fishing was good, and the local oaks bountiful, and in time they piled up immense middens around their huts, sea shell mounds on the bay side and acorn shells on the inland side. This gave the place its early alternative name of Feroks (middens).

     Discovery. This idyllic existence came to an abrupt end with the arrival of Gaspar de Portola’s exploration party in 1769. Traditionally (though not in fact), it was at Las Bellotas that the explorer first saw San Francisco Bay. One legend of the first encounter highlights the difficulties of communication across linguistic barriers. The story goes that while approaching the village, Portola encountered an Indian. Pointing to the immense acorn mound that was all he could see of it, he asked the local what it was. The native, assuming he meant the village, replied “Tokobei Oka” (Children’s-haven Town), which sounded to Portola like taco de bellotas, or “pile of acorns” in Spanish. As the name seemed appropriate, the spot became Taco de Bellotas in the journals of the expedition – despite the fact that the actual native word for acorn midden, as was learned soon after, was gnor feroks. The later Rivera-Palou expedition referred to the area by the shorter and more prosaic phrase las Bellotas (the acorns), and it was Las Bellotas to the Spanish from that time forth.

     The Mission Era. The Bellotas regarded the Spaniards as potential allies against the Ohlone, while the Spaniards were impressed by the substantiality of the Bellotas’ village, the only true “town” they encountered in California. Thus it was natural that it be considered as a site for a mission. Indeed, in 1777 the Franciscan missionaries established an outstation of Mission San Jose at the Indian village, though it had an inauspicious start, being put under the direction of Father Ignacio Borachio, a fanatical self- flagellant the parish wanted to be rid of. He is recorded to have renamed the place for some saint or other, but no one remembers which, so the Rivera-Palou party’s name stuck. His tenure was hampered by the refusal of the local Ohlone to relocate there, as well as the reluctance of the Bellotas to host them. Under Borachio’s successors, the church was refounded as a proper mission further south, at the limits of Bellota land, and designated Mission Santiago. This name also failed to displace that of the explorers, but the mission itself, on the site of present-day Portola Plaza, became the hub of the modern town. Mission Santiago was a religious success but a demographic disaster as its charges, concentrated in the quadrangle, succumbed to European diseases. The Bellotas, more used to crowded conditions, fared somewhat better than the other natives, particularly after they were permitted to return to their nearby village – for the padres soon realized that because of the Bellotas’ peculiar relationship with their neighbors there was no danger of them running away. This took away some of the logic for the position of the mission church, which after being gutted by earthquake and fire was consequently moved again, to a more suitable location southwest of the former building. Under the Franciscans the community grew into the Mexican era, with Hispanic colonists gradually supplanting the natives.

     The Fraudulent Pueblo. By the early 19th century, enough colonists had settled south of the Mission to justify establishing Las Bellotas as a pueblo – at least in the minds of their leaders. Persuading surrounding landowners to back them, they petitioned in 1819 for a grant separate from the mission, only to be rebuffed. The authorities, in accordance with standard colonial practice, regarded the mission itself as the base for any potential town, and were not inclined to divide its holdings. But such is human nature that a suitable gratuity eventually secured a fraudulent grant of half a league of the mission’s lands to the south and east of the mission quadrangle “for grazing purposes,” in the name of the landowners the settlers had got to back them. This several of the settlers combined in 1820 to buy up on dubious security, proceeding to establish a civic government anyway. The authorization was forged, as were the boundaries claimed, which were well in excess of the grant. Brazenness, it apparently was felt, was the best cover for illegitimacy. This action heralded the dubious beginning of Las Bellotas as a civic institution. Notorious rustler and hide merchant Joaquin de Vega became the first alcalde.

     Hide And Lumber Port. In the rancho era Las Bellotas gained a new lease on life as a social center for the surrounding ranching families, and a shipping point of the hide and tallow trade. It was then that Redwood Harbor, on the deepwater slough north of Santiago Harbor, began to be used as a port facility. The hide trade declined in the 1840s, but with the advent of the logging industry the town and port attracted enough riff-raff to flourish into the American period. One local fixture during this boom time was colorful sawyer Paul Bunthorn, whom some have seen as a prototype of the folktales’ Paul Bunyan.

     Title Problems and Decline. The transfer of sovereignty brought about a crisis, as the “Pueblo” suddenly had to prove its status and title to the lands it claimed, both of which were difficult, since its status was invalid and its supposed boundaries laughable. Putting forth the community as the successor of the old mission might have bypassed these problems – by this time, it more or less was the mission’s successor. Whether from ignorance, bad counsel, or too much financial stake in the fraudulent title, this was not done. Instead, local leaders simply reiterated the old lies and hoped for the best.
     “The best” proved to be the loss of all land claimed in excess of the 1819 grant, including most of what the community would have been entitled to had it made its claim as Mission Santiago. Defects in the title were deemed to have been quieted by the 1820 purchase from the surrounding ranchos. Ironically, the only non-grant lands not lost to the surrounding ranchos were the church and the Bellota Indian lands to the north, to which the fraudulent grant was deemed an add-on due to ambiguous wording in the charter. The forged authorization to erect the pueblo itself withstood scrutiny long enough to survive early court challenge, and hence Las Bellotas was established as a city in U.S. law. The town began a steep decline all the same, first on account of the Gold Rush, which drew much of the population away to the mines, and later through the loss of its port – Redwood Harbor was held to lie within the Rancho de las Pulgas after the false boundaries of the “pueblo” grant were disallowed, whereupon the speculator Simon Mezes seized control of it as part of his plan to develop the rival town of Redwood City.

     The Later 19th Century. Las Bellotas now entered a period of stagnation, and its history through the end of the nineteenth century was not notable. The development currents of the day (such as they were) largely passed it by after State Senator Horace Drizzle’s scheme to make it the metropolis of the South Bay collapsed in the 1850s. (It may have been just as well: he planned to rename it “Drizzleburg”). His main legacy was the projection and partial realization of a great plaza between the mission church and the main area of settlement to the east. There was some excitement in 1863 when the Union vessel Demara was sabotaged by Southern sympathizers and sank in Redwood Harbor: the casualties were hospitalized in the then little-used old church, where they vandalized the altar and left some historical graffiti that remains to this day. In 1868 a new town hall was built, and the town council at last moved out of the old alcalde’s quarters on the plaza. As a result the plaza was forgotten – aside from its bare ground being resurfaced in cobblestones in the 1870s, little was done to maintain it. Fortuitously, this neglect ensured that its Hispanic architecture survived long enough to become a historic reconstruction project in the 1920s.

     Ethnic Diversification. As Las Bellotas dwindled to a backwater it also became a magnet for the old Californio population of the region, because of whom it retained some of its old Hispanic culture. Many settled on unoccupied Indian lands, strengthening the town’s claim to that area. There were also influxes of Portuguese, Italians and Chinese during this time, primarily toward the end of the century. Most came to farm, fish, or avoid unwanted attention. But enough “Anglos” also came that the town obtained a new upper crust, an undesired one in the eyes of the other inhabitants. One typically Anglo sin was to slur the old Indian name of the town (still in common use) into the derisive “Taco Bay.” This derogatory term for Las Bellotas would negatively prejudice later campaigns to make Tokobei the town’s official name.

     The Turn Of The Century. The town entered the twentieth century as a small hamlet surrounding a decaying town center seemingly much too large for it. Many of the buildings and much of the arcade around the plaza were practically in ruins, and more were destroyed in the fire of 1907. To the west and northwest of the plaza a shantytown of crumbling adobes and clapboard shacks formed an ethnically mixed warren inhabited by the lower classes: to the east, around the new civic center, more substantial homes and a handful of Victorian mansions prevailed. Santiago Harbor formed a dense slum of Bellota Indians and enclaves of ethnic fishermen where the town’s writ did not run: such law as existed there was customary. Further east and south there were fewer dwellings and more open land, farmed or ranched by a few old families. Commercial flower growing spread through these areas: it would become a staple of the local economy for over sixty years, providing a replacement for the tanning industry, the old economic mainstay. Such local excitement as there was centered primarily around the train depot south of the plaza, or the Negro music scene in “Ragtown” to the west.

     Stangler and the Teens. Into this mix Herman Stangler, developer extraordinaire, descended like a thunderbolt. Viewing Las Bellotas’ poorer areas as prime sites for real estate redevelopment, he won the town council over to his plan to flatten and rebuild whole sections as tidy, taxpaying and lily-white neighborhoods. Using financial incentives, high pressure tactics and bald threats, he got his way in the western part of town, along the El Camino highway. In two years he converted it from a drain on the town into a financial asset. Then he turned to Santiago Harbor, or Jimmy’s Hollow, as it was now known. First he bullied the Chinese and Portuguese, and when the latter wouldn’t bully he brought in toughs to burn them out. Next he tackled the Bellota Indians, winning over many by glib promises of individual (rather than tribal) land ownership. Two elements of the tribe, however, refused to budge. These were the tribal elders and a segment of younger, modernist Indians, as repelled by Stangler’s tactics as they were attracted by his promises. But the elders and the modernists were at odds, and as the former dictated a passive resistance opposition was at first ineffective.

     The Defeat of Stangler. It was the apparent murder in Stangler’s company of Charles Smallvoice, the one Bellota able to bridge the two factions, that galvanized a more effective response. Soon after two modernists took the lead – Hawk Figueroa in the courts, and Jonathan Garber (later famed author Sturgis Antelope) in the press. Joining forces, they demonstrated the Indian lands legally inalienable and exempt from the authority of Las Bellotas, and uncovered Stangler’s complicity in a number of criminal schemes or actions. The developer’s response was an incendiary assault on the Indians, intended to burn them out as he had the Portuguese. Figueroa and most of Garber’s family perished in the blaze, and Garber himself was forced into hiding. But it was the end for Stangler and his plans as well. Given away by a confederate, he fled town just ahead of a posse.

     The End of the Title Problems. Afterwards a five-way deal between the U.S. government, the state of California, the town of Las Bellotas and the Bellota Indian tribe finally resolved the various title disputes the struggle had unearthed. The tribe was recognized as a rancheria (small Indian reservation) with exclusive governing powers over most of Jimmy’s Hollow, in exchange for relinquishing its lapsed sovereignty (though not its property rights) over the area to the south. As this region had been taken over by small landowners and large floral concerns, the tribe now started to realize a rental income that would in time lift it out of poverty. That took decades – in the meantime, traumatized by the struggle with Stangler, Jimmy’s Hollow became a closed society, ultra-traditional, suspicious of strangers, and dominated by the tribal elders. The modernists had the option of towing the tribal line or being forced out. Seeing what was in the wind, some left of their own accord. Jonathan Garber was among these.

     The 1920s. The slow decay of the town, reversed by Stangler’s shock tactics, was definitively arrested by a new influx of Anglos in the 1920s. Generally wealthier or at least more pretentious than those who had preceded them, they gradually filled up the area, making it even more “American” in character. Subdivision of the emptier portions of town commenced. At the same time a small artists’ colony was established in the central plaza, centered around beer-guzzling novelist Sturgis Antelope (Jonathan Garber) and neo-pointillist painter Delwin Radar. Antelope’s early work on the moribund tanning industry, Tannery Row, is considered a classic.

      Historic Reconstruction. Under the artists’ influence the rehabilitation of the plaza began. Redubbed Portola Plaza, its buildings received a much needed facelift, generally authentic and quite attractive. The artists were also responsible for the installation of an old Civil War era cannon, raised from the Demara, in the plaza. Not all of the work was as well-advised – for instance, the plaza clock-tower, a noted eyesore with no justification whatsoever in the earlier history of the town, went up at this time. Named Radar Tower in memory of its foremost advocate, it became a local joke after World War II, when the acronym RADAR came into general use.

     The Renaming Campaign. Among less historic-minded citizens, a movement to change the name of the town emerged in the 20s. After a brief flirtation with “Santiago,” “Oakdale” and “Acornville” emerged as the favored choices. The crusade died a quiet death after Sturgis Antelope facetiously pointed out that since shellfish had counted for more in the diet of the original inhabitants than acorns, “Shell Mound” would be more sensible. He and his followers in the artists’ colony also favored a name change, but considered “Tokobei” the best choice historically. The city fathers, calling to mind the derisive “Taco Bay,” did not agree. Hence the whole notion of renaming the town was tabled, never to emerge seriously again.

     Las Bellotas Community College. It was also during the 20s that idealistic social reformer Hayworth B. Poppyseed projected a utopian farming community on the Northside Ranch, one of the last major parcels of unbuilt-up land. It failed before the decade was half over, and was turned over to a private seminary, which went under in the stock market crash and eventually sold out to a locally-established community college district. The college was completed in 1935, with the assistance of WPA workers, and opened its doors to students that fall. Blueblood socialist Garrideb Peeler became its first president.

     The Tubacello Era. The Great Depression slowed rather than halted the town’s development. The man primarily responsible for preserving and fostering the building boom was city councilman Daniel Tubacello, a booster and visionary who showed a positive genius for attracting state and federal aid. His vision, unfortunately, did not extend into the architectural realm: much of the new housing was of the assembly-line variety, and converted the town’s periphery into a suburban wasteland rivaled for sheer banality only by Daly City. Tubacello continued his efforts as mayor in the 1930s and 40s, when under his impetus the new developments in the unincorporated lands were gradually annexed. In 1934 he sponsored a contest in the local paper to determine the best slogan to symbolize the boom. The declared winner, “Come and stay in Taco Bay,” was received by the citizenry with a collective gasp of horror. Tubacello stubbornly championed it, and his machinations ultimately made it the official town motto, which it remains in spite of periodic calls for repeal. It can still be seen, frequently defaced, in faded letters under the welcome sign at the edge of Las Bellotas, right under the symbols of the rotary and fraternal orders. The disparity between the town’s official name and that in the motto has confused out-of-towners for fifty years now. Other than his distasteful slogan, the most prominent memorial to Mayor Tubacello is Tubacello Center, a shopping hub at the eastern end of town built at the height of the real estate boom in the 1940s.

     Mid-Century and After. The 1950s were darkened by McCarthyism. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) turned up an actual (ex-)Communist in Otto Marcuse of the old artists’ colony, and by targeting him managed to enmesh other members of the town’s literary and artistic community in the red scare. Even Sturgis Antelope was implicated: he emerged from the congressional mauling battered but unbowed, and more importantly, unjailed. His popularity, however, took a hit that would not recover for decades. The other big event of the decade was the notorious crash of a dirigible from Moffett Field into the town hall in 1952. Delays plagued the rebuilding: the box-like replacement structure was not completed until 1968, in which year it was burned down by students from the community college protesting the Vietnam war. The conflagration was accidental: the police investigation concluded that too many students lit their draft cards at once.
     The 1970s were mixed. The third town hall was finally ready for occupation in 1973 – an improvement over the second, which was generally judged ugly. But that same year Las Bellotas Community College went bankrupt when treasurer Inego Driesdale, embezzled its assets and absconded to Nauru. The school closed for over a decade. Towards the mid-70s decaying property values eroded the town’s tax base as the excesses of the jerry-built housing boom of earlier years came home to roost. It was also in this period that Sonny Tubacello, son of the former mayor, began his long-running (and so far unsuccessful) push to become mayor in turn, which he renews at each biennial election.

     The Present-Day Town. In recent decades the earlier trend toward Anglicization has reversed as the aging housing stock has attracted residents of more limited means. Today the Anglo-Hispanic mix is fairly even, with perhaps a slight edge to the latter. There is a growing population of children, which finally led to the old college site, which had barely escaped redevelopment as a huge ugly shopping center, being refurbished and reopened as a high school in the late 80s. The emergence of the Taco Bell fast food chain has led to a new (but hardly better) variation on the town nickname, with “Tacobel” displacing “Taco Bay” among younger generations. Understandably, it has failed to catch on among their elders. Current mayor Foster Ortega has even vowed to block the chain from establishing any franchise in town. In general, life goes at a slower pace in Las Bellotas than in the rest of the Peninsula, as aside from a few local highlights there is little to attract the Yuppie and Techie crowds.