Once a valley of the coastal Miwok, Pomo and Wintun peoples, called the
"Valley of the Moon" in their legends, the valley was selected by the
Franciscan order of Spain as the site to build the Mission San Francisco
Solano, the northernmost mission in their chain of twenty-one missions built in
Alta California. Established in 1823 and named to honor St. Francis Solanus,
Mission Solano was the sole California mission established under the rule of a
newly independent Mexico. Within two generations of the Spaniards' arrival,
however, the indigenous societies of the region were dispossessed of their land
and decimated by
