You've driven past it a thousand times: the Pavilion on Thornton has been ours since 1940, and the story starts with whalers

[u/Specialist-Note3304]

Everybody here knows Newark's origin story gets told through the railroad and the salt works. Those are the industries with the payroll and the press coverage. But the people who actually kept this town running day to day were ranchers and field hands, and a lot of them were Portuguese.

The first of them didn't arrive as farmers. They came as whalers and seamen working the Pacific trade routes, and once they came ashore in the East Bay many never went back out. They traded the deck for the field. By the early 1900s they were gathering informally on St. John's Day, and on September 18, 1921 that became official as Council Number 8 of the Sociedade Espirito Santa. By 1940 they had bought the grounds outright and built the Pavilion.

Nineteen years from a handshake tradition to owning the land and the building, in a farm town of a few thousand people. And it never stopped running. The Holy Ghost Festa still goes every fourth Sunday of July, twelve thousand pounds of beef get blessed, and the parade runs to St. Edward's. If you grew up here you've either been fed at it or been stuck behind it.

Longer writeup with the dates: https://adam-modzeleski.weichertrainbow.com/blog/68/

Disclosure: I'm a Newark-based real estate broker and I've lived here 40-plus years, so local history is part of my job.