History of San Luis Obispo

San Diego leaving Fr. José Cavaller, with the difficult task of building the mission. Fr. José Cavaller, five soldiers and two neophytes began building what is today called Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa and would become later the town of San Luis Obispo.

After Junípero Serra left, the difficult task of actually building the mission remained. The mission was built with adobe and tile structures. The mission included: the church, the priest's residence, the convento, the storerooms, residences for single women and families from Spain, soldiers' barracks, and mills. The mission also had land for farming and raising livestock, as the whole community of priests, natives and soldiers needed to produce goods for their own livelihood.

When the Mexican War of Independence from Spain broke out in 1810, all California missions were virtually self-sufficient, receiving few funds from Spain.

With the independence from Spain, there was little left of the thriving community of earlier times. Soon after Mexico won her independence from Spain (1821), the missions were secularized by the Mexican government. However, the community remained in the same location of what is today San Luis Obispo.

San Luis Obispo once had a burgeoning Chinatown in the vicinity of Palm St. and Chorro Street. Laborers were brought from China by Ah Louis in order to construct the Pacific Coast Railway, roads connecting San Luis Obispo to Paso Robles and Paso Robles to Cambria, and also the 1884 to 1894 tunneling through Cuesta Ridge for the Southern Pacific Railroad. The town's Chinatown revolved around Ah Louis Store and other Palm Street businesses owned and run by Chinese business people. Today, Mee Heng Low chop suey shop is all that remains of the culture, although a slightly Chinatown-themed commercial development has been planned. A display of some of the unearthed relics from this period can be seen on the first floor of the Palm