Panoramic view of Sonora Town from Fort Moore Hill looking north over Castelar (or Castellar?) Street, ca.1885

Photograph of a panoramic view of Sonora Town, from Fort Moore Hill looking north over Castelar (or Castellar?) Street, ca.1885. The town consists of street blocks of houses and small buildings. Mountains are visible in the distance.; "Sonoratown, former Mexican downtown residential neighborhood. Mexicans returning from the California Gold Rush in the mid-1850s settled in adobes north of the Plaza Church, along North Main and North Broadway, and on the hilly streets north and west of the Plaza, including Alpine and Buena Vista. The long, low, whitewashed adobes were homes and shops to poor, working-class Mexicans, many from the Mexican province of Sonora. The Plaza Church was their cultural anchor. By the early 1900s, however, the arrival of the railroad, the spread of industry and commerce, and the southward spread of real estate development all gradually undermined Sonoratown as a residential neighborhood." -- Leanord and Dale Pitt