Presidio Park

Visitors and staff at Presidio Park describe hooded, cloaked figures walking the Junípero Serra Museum's perimeter and a child seen near the top of its tower; a bench on the back trails and the adobe watchtower carry their own long-standing reports. Presidio Hill is where the Spanish founded both the Presidio and Mission of San Diego in 1769, the first European settlements on the West Coast of what is now the United States. Burials in consecrated ground here began on 1 July 1769, and surviving records account for at least 213 people buried at the presidio's campo santo and chapel between 1769 and about 1830; the last recorded burial was Henry Delano Fitch, in 1849. George Marston bought the hill to save it and gave it to the city as a park in 1929, the year the Spanish Revival museum was completed on the summit.