Don Bernardo Yorba Ranchhouse Site

The bronze calls Bernardo Yorba the greatest ranchero of the golden age, meaning the man. The state register now says greatest rancho, meaning the land, and the praise moves with one dropped syllable. His 1834 grant took in some thirteen thousand acres north of the Santa Ana River, and on a bluff here he raised a two-storey adobe he named San Antonio. Accounts give it fifty rooms or two hundred. It was leveled in the 1920s. The 1950 plaque ends by naming the Yorbas California's first family, beside a river where Tongva villages stood when Portolá passed.

What the plaque says

Site of Don Bernardo Yorba Hacienda On this land, portion of Santa Ana grant awarded by King of Spain 1810 to José Antonio Yorba, and additional grants to his son by Governor José Figueroa 1834, was created Hacienda of Don Bernardo Yorba. Greatest ranchero of golden age, Bernardo Yorba was third son of José Yorba, who came to California with Don Gaspar de Portolá 1769, and established California's first family. State Registered Landmark No. 226 Marker placed by California Centennials Commission. Base furnished by Placentia Round Table Club Dedicated May 3, 1950

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Planes of Fame Air Museum — 11 mi
  On the field where the country smelted its surplus warplanes — and about thirty of the aircraft here still fly.
• Graber Olive House — 17 mi
  The oldest business in Ontario, a cannery of five hundred brine vats — shut since the pandemic and in foreclosure.
• Sherman Institute & the Sherman Indian Museum — 20 mi
  The federal Indian boarding school Riverside lobbied to get — still a school today, its 1902 building now a museum.
• Puvungna — 20 mi
  The Acjachemen and Tongva place of creation: twenty-two acres of open ground on a university campus, still not in the hands of its people.

More markers nearby

• Old Santa Ana — 4.3 mi
• Olinda — 4.9 mi
• Red Hill — 7.5 mi
• North Gate of City of Anaheim — 8.0 mi