The original inhabitants of the Castro were the Ohlone Indian Tribe. In 1776, the Spanish de Anza Expedition found sites for the Presidio military camp and Mission Dolores. What is now the corner of Castro and Market Streets was once an intersection of trails between these two locations and existing Indian trails.
Castro Street was named for Joaquin Isidro de Castro, a soldier with de Anza, whose grandson Jose Castro was a resistance fighter when the United States took California from Mexico in 1846. The Eureka Valley , which is now called the Castro, was part of the 4,000-acre Rancho San Miguel, owned by Jose de Jesus Noe, that extended from Twin Peaks to Daly City .
In 1849 gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, when the population of San Francisco was 2,000 souls. By 1850 the population grew to 34,000 people, mostly men. Working-class European immigrants began moving into Eureka Valley and building Victorian homes for their large families. A steam rail system from the Ferry Building at the downtown end of Market Street reached Castro and Market in the early 1880s, bringing a surge of new settlers.
Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church was consecrated in 1902 and for many residents, Eureka Valley became Most Holy Redeemer Parish. The area was a regular blue-collar neighborhood, with many bars, whose patrons were almost all male. Then, in the 1950’s, the American dream became a house in the suburbs and many of the younger residents moved out. In the early 1960’s San Francisco saw the loss of a huge number of blue-collar jobs which accelerated the exodus. Property values plummeted and many Castro Street businesses closed.
Meanwhile, other changes were taking place. San Francisco had always been a bawdy port city; it had been the debarkation point for the U.S. Navy in the Spanish-American War, World War II, and the Korean War. Sailors given dishonorable discharges for being homosexual often found themselves facing bleak prospects back in their hometowns, so they stayed in this relatively tolerant city.
America experienced a Civil Rights Movement and a Women’s Movement. The Beats took over San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950’s and the hippies invaded Haight Ashbury, right across the hill from Eureka Valley in the 1960’s. In 1969 the Stonewall Riots in New York City heralded the start of the gay rights movement, which quickly spread across the country. In 1963 a gay bar called the Missouri Mule opened on Market Street between Castro and Noe, followed by the Pendulum on Eighteenth Street a few years later. Attracted by the bars and the cheap rents, gay hippies began drifting over from the Haight. |
