Serrano Tanning Vats

Two vats, cut in 1819 by Payómkawichum workers under Leandro Serrano, for turning cowhide into leather. Hides were the rancho economy's only real export and the crews who produced them were Luiseño. What stands beside the freeway is not where any of that happened: the vats were lifted, restored and reset on this spot in 1981 by a Clampers chapter. The object is genuine and its location is a decision. And the name on all three landmarks along this stretch is a Spanish family's, not the Serrano nation's.

What the plaque says

Nearby, two vats were built in 1819 by the Luiseño Indians under the direction of Leandro Serrano, first non-Indian settler in what is now Riverside County. The vats were used in making leather from cow hides. In 1981 the vats were restored and placed here by the Billy Holcomb Chapter of E Clampus Vitus.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• California Citrus State Historic Park — 9.0 mi
  A state park that is still a working orange grove — the last big piece of Riverside's citrus landscape left standing.
• Sherman Institute & the Sherman Indian Museum — 10 mi
  The federal Indian boarding school Riverside lobbied to get — still a school today, its 1902 building now a museum.
• March Field Air Museum — 15 mi
  A century of the same field, still working — the museum parked outside the fence of a base that has flown since 1918.
• Riverside Chinatown Site — 15 mi
  Riverside's second Chinatown — an empty lot on purpose, with eighty percent of it still underground.

More markers nearby

• Ruins of Third Serrano Adobe — steps away
• Serrano Boulder — 0.7 mi
• Old Temescal Road — 1.0 mi
• Butterfield Stage Station — 2.9 mi