Concord

The Pacheco Adobe and the Devil’s Ranch

In 1939 descendants of Salvio Pacheco lived in the thick-walled adobe Pacheco House, in the shade of pepper trees at Concord and Salvio Avenues.² The 1939 guide places the town on Rancho del Diablo, granted to Salvio Pacheco in 1834, and the state landmark names the grant Monte del Diablo.^2,3 The sources disagree on the date of the house: the state landmark says Pacheco finished the two-story adobe on June 24, 1835, and calls it the first building erected in the valley, the 1939 guide says he built it about a decade after the grant, and a 1976 marker reads circa 1846.^2,3,4 American squatters had settled on Pacheco’s land by 1852, but the United States Government secured his title the next year, and in 1939 the patent date, 1853, could be read on the stone boundary posts in front of the house.² His son, Don Fernando Pacheco, built an adobe of his own in 1843, a quarter mile north of a state plaque at Grant Street and Solano Way, and it was reconstructed in 1941.^1,3 In 1865 Salvio Pacheco gave land for Live Oak Cemetery to serve Clayton and Concord.⁵

Todos Santos for the People of Pacheco

Dr. J. H. Carothers laid out the nearby town of Pacheco in 1857 around a warehouse and a flour mill, and it was largely swept away by flood in 1862, twice ravaged by fire in the next 6 years, and almost leveled by earthquake in 1868.² In 1868 Salvio Pacheco, his son Fernando, and his son-in-law Francisco Galindo had 20 acres beside the old Pacheco-Clayton road surveyed for a village they called Todos Santos, with 19 residential and commercial blocks and a public plaza.¹ In 1869 building lots went at no cost to former merchants and residents of Pacheco, and immigrants followed, among them gold and coal miners and ranchers.¹ By 1869 the village had become known as Concord.¹ Galindo’s home, now a Concord Historical Landmark, was built in 1856.⁶

Rails, a Charter, and a High School

The Southern Pacific Railroad crossed the southwest edge of town, and Blum and Wittenmeyer laid out a major addition between the tracks and the original town.⁷ A Victorian Concord School went up between Willow Pass Road and Salvio Street in 1892, and in 1896 the Odd Fellows Hall was moved from Pacheco to the corner of Salvio and Colfax Streets.⁷ The Martinez-Pacheco-Clayton stagecoach line stopped at the Henry Ivey Livery Stable on Salvio Street.⁷ Concord was incorporated in 1905, and blacksmith Joseph Boyd became its first mayor.⁷ The Mount Diablo Union High School campus opened the same year, and the town chronology says it would become the longest continually operating large high school in California.⁷ In the 1900s the Oakland & Antioch Electric Railroad crossed the northeast side of town, streets were graveled and paved, sewers were installed, and saloon operations were curtailed.⁷ In 1939 the Federal Writers’ Project guide gave Concord 1,125 people and found it shipping the farm produce of the surrounding valley.²

The 1944 Explosion and Todos Santos Plaza

Near Concord at 10:18 p.m. on July 17, 1944, an explosion obliterated two ships, killed 320 men, and wounded 390, and the Navy and National Park Service marker calls it the worst stateside disaster of World War II.⁸ Most of the dead were African-American stevedores, and according to the marker the disaster helped push the Navy to reconsider its policy of racial segregation.⁸ Concord and Kitakami, Japan, became sister cities on October 25, 1974.⁹ The Concord Historical Society has marked the Keller House, built in 1902-03, and the Elworthy House, built in 1913, as Concord Historical Landmarks.^10,11 A 1994 plaza marker calls Concord the largest city in Contra Costa County.¹ The founders dedicated the old central plaza as a public park in perpetuity, it was formally named Todos Santos Plaza by 1970, and it has held wisteria, a bandstand, two naval cannons, and a redwood pergola around its edge.¹