The Bernal Hacienda

The Bernal Hacienda. Rancho Santa Teresa’s homeplace for family and business operations. This sketch depicts what the Bernal Hacienda may have looked like in the late 1820s. Visible are several adobe buildings, pens and corrals located in the area below the Santa Teresa Spring., With an economy based on hides and tallow, a rancho family’s wealth revolved around the number of cattle it owned. Jose Joaquin Bernal processed about 5,000 hides, called leatherbacks, every year. Hides were traded for goods that the early Californios could not make, such as windows, watches, guns and fine clothing. By the time of his death in 1837, Jose Joaquin’s 13 children and extended family of 78 dependents occupied the rancho property., Inset Image: , Bernal Hacienda at Rancho Santa Teresa, Bear and bull fights, a form of entertainment brought to California from Mexico, drew hundreds to legendary rancho rodeos. California grizzly bears (now extinct) were captured from the hillsides and pitted against bulls for gory to-the-death battles. Oral family history tells of these ferocious fights at Rancho Santa Teresa, and of the Bear Tree, a large oak near the hacienda where bears were tethered just before a fight. The U.S. government outlawed these fights shortly after California entered the Union., Inset Images: , Rancho vaqueros capturing a bull, Bear and bull fight