A Brief History of Oceanside, CA

European explorers first visited the area in 1769. The Spanish Missionaries under Father Junipero Serra founded Mission San Luis Rey de Francia on a former site of a Luiseno Indian village on the banks of the San Luis Rey River. In the early 1800s, introduced farming and grazing changed the landscape of what would become Oceanside. The area, like all of California, was under Spanish, in 1821 Mexican rule and annexed by the U.S. in 1848.