CALIFORNIA GENESIS.

Byline: Story and photos by Eric Noland Travel Editor

SAN DIEGO - There isn't a tree for miles, much less a shrub, a flower pot or an ornamental garden.

That's what strikes you most as you look at weathered, grainy photographs and faded drawings of San Diego's Old Town.

Today's visitors to San Diego - particularly those who will be streaming in for the Super Bowl Jan. 26 - will find a lush, gleaming city. But in its early days of European settlement - long before high-mountain dams, aqueducts and landscaping bubblers - it was a dusty, hardscrabble land of barren coastal hills.

Engage your imagination as you wander among the historic adobe dwellings that cluster around the Old Town Plaza or as you scan the horizon from the tower of the Junipero Serra Museum, a mission-style building on the nearby hilltop site of the original mission and presidio.

This is where California as we know it began - New Spain's first toehold in what would become the Golden State. It's not difficult to imagine how different life was from the bustling modern city that sits in its place.

La Casa de Bandini, an adobe built in 1829, houses a working Mexican restaurant - and a good one. You can sip a margarita and dig into some carne asada tampiquena in the very room where Don Juan Bandini once hosted lavish dancing parties.

In La Casa de Estudillo, a 14-room, U-shaped adobe completed the same year by a former presidio commandant, you might learn from a walking-tour guide that the floors were dirt for the first 13 years of the house's life. Chinese carpets were laid down over the earth.

In the house museum at La Casa de Machado y Silvas, you can read about a hiding place in a wall, discovered in 1948, that contained an important document. It pertains to Allen B. Light, who sailed with Richard Henry Dana on the ``Two Years Before the Mast'' voyage. The document identifies Light as being ``coloured,'' ``free'' and a ``citizen of the United States'' - undoubtedly an invaluable paper for an African-American to possess while traveling in California in the early 1800s.

Old Town, which sits in the elbow formed by Interstates 5 and 8, is administered as a state historic park and encompasses seven original buildings and 20 replicas loosely configured around a central plaza. No admission is charged for entry, and even the one-hour guided walking tours are free (forming in front of the Robinson-Rose House, which is the park headquarters, daily at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.).

Revenue is generated through commercial enterprise - most of the historic buildings double as stores, and there are no fewer than four Mexican restaurants around the plaza. But if you squint past the Indian curios, tie-dyed T-shirts, beef jerky and geodes, you can unearth numerous historical nuggets.

``I think they've struck a reasonable balance,'' said John Goodbody, a tourist from London who strolled through Old Town recently with his wife, Claire. ``When we came in and turned into the area of the shops and the gifts (the Bazaar del Mundo), we thought, 'Oh, dear.' But once you go on the tour and come to this area (of the historic adobes), you can appreciate it more. You've got to make an effort. It would be easy to show up, just see it and miss the significance.''

This is, indeed, an essential site in the history of California.

Spain, which had thoroughly colonized Mexico by the 1700s, sent five expeditions into Alta California in 1769. Gaspar de Portola gathered the disparate members - soldiers, sailors, Franciscan missionaries - on a hill overlooking San Diego Bay on May 17 and created a military outpost. A mission was founded - the first in the California chain - two months later by Serra himself.

The settlement was anything but idyllic. The local indigenous people, the Kumeyaay, did not take well to subjugation at the mission. In fact, they rebelled violently.

Also, the mission was abandoned only five years after its founding and a new one established six miles up the San Diego River, near where Qualcomm Stadium now stands. The move was prompted by a poor water supply and soured relations between the soldiers and the Kumeyaay.

The presidio remained at the original site, and in later years, after Mexico secured its independence from Spain, soldiers retiring from service were allotted acreage just down the hill, and what is now Old Town began to take shape in the early 1820s.

A museum stands on the original mission and presidio site today. An exhibit of artifacts unearthed here, titled ``Treasures Uncovered,'' is currently displayed in the mission-style tower. (The museum is only open on weekends; the exhibit runs through March).

Among the items to peruse are buttons, corroded belt buckles, jewelry pieces, fragments of dishes and numerous remnants of personal religious items: small crosses and crucifixes, medallions, fragments of wooden statues.

Life was short on comforts during the period - perhaps difficult to imagine as you stand in the verdant patio garden of the Estudillo house or on the grassy lawn of the Old Town Plaza, surrounded by towering, shady trees.

When Dana visited here in 1835, he described the presidio as being in ``ruinous'' condition and observed that the settlement was ``composed of about 40 dark brown-looking huts and three or four larger ones white- washed'' (the de Bandini and Estudillo houses undoubtedly among them). He further noted that there were ``no trees of any size for miles.''

On our walking tour, guide Sam Kelly led us into the house museum at the Machado y Silvas home and indicated kitchen shelves hanging from ceiling beams by thin ropes. This was done, he said, so that rats couldn't climb up cabinets or walls to get to the food.

At the outdoor kitchen of the Machado y Stewart house, which dates to the 1830s, Kelly said, ``They didn't have wood for cooking because there were no trees.'' So they cooked their food by building a blaze with dried- up cow chips.

At the Estudillo house, meanwhile, we encountered what appeared to be a rock pot hanging from a beam in the interior patio. It is a 200-year-old rock purifier. Drinking water was chronically scarce in early San Diego, so water from the murky San Diego River or from wells was placed in these porous-rock vessels. Eventually, it would slowly drip out the bottom in potable form.

The early residents of Old Town were similarly resourceful in the building design of their homes. In some places, the adobe walls are 43 inches thick, with wide porch roofs and eaves. When you step into one of the homes on a hot day, you might detect a 10-degree drop in temperature - without so much as a breath of air conditioning.

In the Mason Street School, which dates to the mid-1800s, look up at the ceiling. The lumber is finely milled and impeccably laid - as smooth as a counter top. It's speculated that it came from a salvaged ship. In a region of limited resources and industry, something as valuable as ship decking or paneling was not about to be wasted.

Old Town was always a cultural jumble: Spaniards, Indians, Mexicans, Americans, sailors and settlers of assorted nationalities (Bandini's family was Italian, relocated to Peru, then to here). The park still pays homage to that melting pot. During my lunch at Rancho el Nopal, a marimba band was playing melodies from Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. A couple of hours later, on a stage in the Bazaar del Mundo, a festively dressed folklorico ballet troupe was performing dances from Mexico's Jalisco state.

And then there is the solidly American entrepreneurial presence in the replica buildings. Wrightington House, formerly a dentist's office, now sells ``fine and fancy flower pots.'' The San Diego House, once a saloon, dispenses ``herbs and spices from around the world.'' The Dodson Building, formerly a law office, hawks Far East gewgaws. At least the Racine and Laramie establishment is true to its roots - it sold cigars then, it sells them still.

The reign of California's first settlement was a brief one. Power and influence moved to Los Angeles, San Francisco and even a Gold Rush resupply town, Sacramento. Even San Diego ditched this site, moving its center of commerce and habitation down to the waterfront just before an 1872 fire devastated the original enclave.

But if you climb into the tower of the Junipero Serra Museum, you'll probably conclude that Portola at least selected an area that would prove to be a people magnet. To the east, in a valley that was all but deserted as recently as 1935 (according to a photo on the wall), is Hotel Circle, a golf course, the stadium and fully nine lanes of I-8. To the west is the glittering jewel of San Diego Bay, the land in between a swath of homes, businesses and asphalt.

Goodbody, the London tourist who hails from a land with remnants of the Roman Empire, chuckled and said, ``They point out something here from 1830 and people kind of gasp. You don't have the amazing feeling - 'It's 1,000 years old!' But when you see a picture that's 100 years old, there's nothing here. Amazing things have been accomplished in such a short period in America.

``It's almost history you feel you can touch.''

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: San Diego is 121 miles south of downtown Los Angeles via Interstate 5. To get to Old Town from I-5 south, exit at Sea World Drive. Turn right to Pacific Highway (the first light) and turn left, then take Pacific Highway to Taylor Street and turn left to the state historic park. From I-15 south, take the 163 Freeway south and exit at Hotel Circle. The route is a little tricky, but just follow the brown state-park signs to Old Town. This route will also take you past the original mission and presidio site where the Junipero Serra Museum is housed.

PARKING: There are several free parking lots around the edge of Old Town, and parking on most of the surrounding streets is free, but spaces in the lots and on the streets fill up quickly, particularly on weekends. Here's an alternative: There is a big transportation center at the corner of Pacific Highway and Taylor Street serving the red trolley, city buses and the Coaster train. Park in the expansive free parking lot here and take the short pedestrian tunnel under the tracks to Old Town.

STATE HISTORIC PARK: The park visitors center is housed in the Robinson-Rose House, which fronts the plaza. It is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. There is a small museum here, and the one-hour guided walking tours form out front each day at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Information: [phone]; www.cal-parks.ca.gov.

JUNIPERO SERRA MUSEUM: Located at 2727 Presidio Drive, a short distance from Old Town. It is open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults; $4 for seniors, students and military; $2 for kids (ages 6-17). The ``Treasures Uncovered'' exhibit is scheduled to run through March. Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 photos, map, box

Photo:

(1 -- 4 -- color) Images of early California enliven San Diego's Old Town: the mission-style Junipero Serra Museum, above center; the interior courtyard of La Casa de Estudillo, right; folklorico dancers at the Bazaar del Mundo, above; a metal sculpture atop the Rancho el nopal restaurant, top.

(5) The kitchen is outdoors at the Machado y Silvas house, an early 19th century adobe.

(6) When settlers came in the early 1800s, the San Diego landscape was much less idyllic than today in Old Town.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

Box:

IF YOU GO (see text)

Map:

OLD TOWN SAN DIEGO

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist