Diego Sepúlveda Adobe, Adobe home in Costa Mesa, California.
The Diego Sepúlveda Adobe is an earthen-brick house in Costa Mesa, California, built with thick adobe walls and wooden beams in the Spanish colonial style. The building sits close to the Santa Ana River bed and is among the oldest surviving homes in this part of the state.
The house was built between 1817 and 1823 as a residence for the mayordomo and herders of Mission San Juan Capistrano. These workers managed the cattle and horses that kept the mission's ranching operations running.
The rooms display objects from four periods of California history, from Native American artifacts to Victorian furnishings. Visitors can see how different eras left their mark side by side within the same walls.
The site opens on select weekend days, so it is worth checking in advance when visits are available. It sits on Adams Avenue in Costa Mesa, which makes it easy to find by car.
A mastodon skeleton was uncovered here during excavations in 1962, showing that large animals roamed this land thousands of years ago. The find places this small plot of land within a much longer story than its adobe walls alone suggest.
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