San Juan Bautista officials neglected to take one of the crucial steps necessary whenever anything is constructed in the city – built, literally, on a foundation of history.
After the Aromas/San Juan School District started tearing out grass about two weeks ago for an approved project to build a six-acre recreation area with two soccer fields, two baseball fields and a parking lot next to San Juan School, a resident called and notified officials the property might be historically sensitive.
School leaders looked into the claim – which, it turns out, very well might be true. The plot in question is around the area where the original El Camino Real led into the city. The El Camino Real is the trail connecting the state’s cherished missions, including the one on which San Juan prides itself.
School officials’ action – after the far more blaring inaction by the city – has come too late and shows that more attention must be given to such precautions at the outset of public projects, as opposed to smack-dab in the middle, and after ground is broken.
Preserving history should be a top priority for any public official in the Mission City. We only hope, meanwhile, that something historically valuable already hasn’t been destroyed by this flawed process.
While the district is now taking steps to avoid tearing up historic artifacts, the archeologist it recently hired to watch over the digging process expressed frustration last week at the timing of their concern.
The archeologist from California State University, Monterey Bay, Ruben Mendoza, said this to Free Lance reporter Alice Joy: “We want to minimize damages to the historical documents that exist. If they’ve survived 200 years, are we going to destroy that in a fortnight? Because unfortunately, a lot of that has been done in San Juan.”
Scary thought, coming from an archeological expert.
Mendoza, who has studied the San Juan area for more than 12 years, pointed out that most of the city is historic property and needs archeological approval for any type of digging.
How, knowing that, could officials have failed to examine six acres in the heart of San Juan without at least questioning its historic sensitivity? It’s inexcusable, to say the least.
We expect school officials to follow through on their now evident concern and take whatever actions are necessary to avoid destroying anymore history than possibly already has perished. What city leaders should do immediately in the aftermath of this discovery is also examine what kind of more rigid, formal steps can be implemented – for all public projects – to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
