Los Peñasquitos: San Diego's Oldest Adobe

Just off Interstate Fifteen in San Diego's northern suburbs sits one of the oldest surviving adobe houses in San Diego County. Rancho Santa Maria de Los Peñasquitos was granted in eighteen twenty-three to Francisco María Ruiz, a retired military commander of the San Diego presidio, making it one of the earliest land grants issued under Mexican rule in California. The name means little cliffs in Spanish, a reference to the canyon that runs through the property.

Ruiz built a ranch house that was later enlarged into what is now the Johnson-Taylor Adobe, and the rancho changed hands several times after American annexation in eighteen forty-eight. The Johnson-Taylor Adobe, as it is also known, survives as a remarkably intact example of California rancho-era construction. The surrounding land is now Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve, a city-owned open space where hikers walk terrain that was shaped by Spanish colonial and Mexican land grant history.