Commemorating Sonoma’s real birthday

Happy Pueblo Day, Sonoma!

That’s what one local history buff hopes will become a common refrain heard in the Valley every June 24 – afterall, says historian Robert Demler, that’s the date Sonoma was founded.

Huh?! What about a little incidence known in these parts as the Bear Flag Revolt, which we celebrated earlier this month with some of the town’s finest amateur thespians reenacting the June 14, 1846, semi-hostile American-settler takeover of Sonoma and subsequent imprisonment of Gen. Vallejo?

That’s all well and good, says Demler, but that’s not the true founding of Sonoma, which actually took place June 24, 1835.

It’s a day, says Demler, that shouldn’t necessarily be overshadowed by the ballyhooed Bear Flag Revolt commemorations.

To that end, Demler, president of the Sonoma League for Historical Preservation, has petitioned the Sonoma City Council to mark June 24 as Sonoma Pueblo Day, in recognition of the date in 1835 when then-Lt. Mariano Vallejo received orders from the Mexican government to establish the Pueblo de Sonoma.

At press time, Mayor David Cook and the City Council were readying a proclamation to present at the June 22 council meeting to officially recognize June 24 as Sonoma Pueblo Day.

In the proclamation, Cook addresses the importance of keeping Sonoma’s history alive.

“One of the missions of the City of Sonoma is to educate, promote interest in and advocate for the dissemination of knowledge of its multicultural heritage,” Cook says in the proclamation, which will be made in the 180th year after Vallejo founded the pueblo.

Demler acknowledges that Sonoma’s identity is more commonly associated with the Bear Flag Revolt – a fact that Pueblo Day isn’t going to change anytime soon. On June 14, 1846, American settlers William Ide and Ezekiel Merritt, along with nearly 30 militants, invaded Vallejo’s Sonoma home on the pretext that a Mexican-American war was about to break – arresting the general (after boozing it up with him a bit), and bringing an end to decades of Mexican rule.

The independent colony of Sonoma was short-lived, however, as California entered the Union in 1850.

“The Bear Flag Revolt was carried out by brutes and thugs,” Demler says. “It makes a poor representation of the people of Sonoma.”

Demler instead encouraged the adoption of the city’s historical birthday, when Vallejo installed a pueblo and officially founded the town.

Demler’s founder’s date is derived from a letter dated June 24, 1835 to Vallejo from Jose Figueroa, general and Mexican territorial governor of Alta California.

In the letter, Figueroa orders Vallejo to establish a plaza, with the city divided into squares. “This government and commandancy approves entirely of the lines designated by you for outlets recognizing as the property of the village and public land and privileges the boundaries of Petaluma, Agua Caliente, Rancho de Huichica, Lena de Suhr, Salvador, Vallejo and La Veronica on the north of the pueblo of Sonoma as the limits of the property,” Figueroa wrote.

The letter added that each building for colonization should include land for planting kitchen gardens a hundred yards in length, to promote self-sustainability as the city grows.

A copy of the letter can be found in the book, “The People of the Pueblo: The Story of Sonoma,” written by former I-T editor Celeste Murphy.

“I believe it is important to remember a city’s roots,” Demler says. “The Bear Flag Revolt should never be considered as the founding day of Sonoma. Vallejo founded the pueblo and the town. That’s the occasion for celebration.”