Over thousands of years, people reshaped this area in response to changing needs, turning a once wide open valley with a large lagoon into smaller parcels serving a growing population. More than 5000 years ago, when the Ohlone were the predominant stewards of these lands, the area was open land with a tule-filled lagoon to the southeast. After the Spanish crown assigned the land to Mission San Jose in 1797, it became pasturage for more than 30,000 head of cattle. By the 1850s, when Francisco Alviso built the original adobe on this hillside, stockraising remained the primary use, with open meadows and oak trees framing the foothills and grassland while the lagoon dominated the valley below. Later farmers drained the lagoon to create more farmland. In the 1920s, the Meadowlark Dairy was built here above the valley floor, taking advantage of natural drainage, air circulation, and abundant shade trees. In the late 20th century, suburban development replaced farming and changed the landscape again, leaving today’s seven-acre park as a small vestige of the once vast landscape. Throughout these changes, water remained a key factor in human use of the area, vital to settlement and development from Native American settlement to the present day, and water rights became a major issue in the early 1900s as Bay Area cities sought new sources of fresh water to support their growth.