Panhe (''

Acjachemen The Acjachemen (, alternate spelling: Acagchemem) are an Indigenous people of California. They historically lived south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and t ...

'': "the place at the water") was one of the largest

villages confirmed to be over 9,600 years old and a current sacred, ceremonial, cultural, and burial site for the Acjachemen people. The site of Panhe is now within

San Onofre State Beach San Onofre State Beach (''San Onofre'', Spanish for " St. Onuphrius") is a state park in San Diego County, California. The beach is south of San Clemente on Interstate 5 at Basilone Road. The state park is leased to the state of California by ...

San Diego County, California San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the fi ...

, located at the confluence of San Mateo Creek and Cristianitos Canyon, approximately upstream from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. The

people fished in San Mateo Creek's extensive freshwater marshes, and practiced a

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

lifestyle. The village of Panhe is estimated to have had a population of 300 or so before the first Spanish explorers came to the area, and is still a sacred site for the Acjachemen people. Panhe is the site of the first baptism in California, and in 1769 saw the first close contact between Spanish explorers, Catholic missionaries, and the Acjachemen people. The village had the greatest number of baptisms in the records of

Mission San Juan Capistrano Mission San Juan Capistrano ( es, Misión San Juan Capistrano) is a Spanish mission in San Juan Capistrano, Orange County, California. Founded November 1, 1776 in colonial ''Las Californias'' by Spanish Catholic missionaries of the Franciscan O ...

. Panhe was nearly destroyed by a planned toll road construction that was meant to connect to

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Califor ...

, but this was stopped by a coalition of Acjachemen people, environmentalists, and surfer groups. There is a yearly festival held at the site by the Acjachemen people to honor their ancestors and to partake in their culture together. The United Coalition to Protect Panhe and The City Project advocate for the preservation of the site.Save San Onofre and Native American Sacred Site Panhe
/ref>

References

{{authority control Former populated places in California Former Native American populated places in California Juaneño populated places History of San Diego County, California Acjachemen