July 30, 2004

Dear Friends:

On Tuesday, August 3, 2004 at 3:00 PM in the City Council Chamber, City Hall, 100 Santa Rosa Avenue, Santa Rosa, will be held a public meeting that everyone in Sonoma County should know about. the hearing is being held to confirm plans to go ahead with the "construction of 265 Apartment Units on 9.18 Acres and a neighborhood park/open space on the remaining 5.66 acres for Creekside Village Apartments located at 2323 Montgomery Drive, File Number MJ01-031."

For those unfamiliar with this location, let me describe it.

The proposed apartment complex would stand on and around what is without dispute the most important historical site in Santa Rosa, and also indisputably one of the most important archaeological and historical sites in this part of California: the Carrillo Adobe.

The Carrillo Adobe (walls still standing, protected under a metal-roofed pole structure) was the first house built in Santa Rosa. It was built in 1837 on her arrival here by the founder of Santa Rosa, Maria Ignacia López de Carrillo, a Spanish widow from San Diego, mother-in-law of Mariano Vallejo. Though insufficiently documented, there is some evidence that Señora Carrillo built her house at what had earlier been a Spanish-Mexican asistencia, or satellite chapel, of the Mission of San Francisco Solano in Sonoma. But even if there had never been this chapel pre-dating the Carrillo Adobe, the importance and antiquity of this place goes back much, much further.

For generations and centuries on this site was, as abundantly proved in numerous archaeological investigations and reports, a place of habitation for the native peoples of this area * the Southeastern Pomo. Many artifacts have been found there over the years, and even possibly fragments of human bone, showing this place to have been a favored place of residence for the Pomo, on the banks of the Santa Rosa Creek.

The Creekside Village Apartments Environmental Impact Report, submitted in the course of this project, was reviewed by members of the Sonoma County Historical Society. We are of the opinion that mitigations to issues raised in the process earlier have not been adequately addressed.

And other essential issues yet to be addressed have also surfaced in the meantime. We are convinced that the project's Environmental Impact Report must be submitted to yet another round of public comment.

The Sonoma County Historical Society would like to urge all Sonoma County residents who care about preserving this irreplaceable piece of our history to take part in this discussion.

If our opportunity to speak now is allowed to slip away, so may well be our history.

Sincerely yours,
Anthony Hoskins
President
Sonoma County Historical Society