On tree-lined Dolores Street stands the oldest building in San Francisco. Mission San Francisco de Asis, founded just days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence and popularly referred to as Mission Dolores, marks the city’s birth and also the final resting place of many notable early Californians.

The Mission Dolores cemetery is directly adjacent to the Mission and hidden behind an unremarkable white stucco façade. Inside the open-air enclosure, a larger-than-life statue of the mission’s founder, Father Junipero Serra, looms over a throng of aging grave markers. Redwood, cypress and juniper trees tower over well-manicured gardens interwoven with marble headstones and small, above-ground mausoleums made of brick and cordoned off with weathered wrought iron. The small parcel of land, about the size of three tennis courts, opens a window into San Francisco’s past and cultivates a serene ambiance circa 1776.

At one point there were roughly 6,000 bodies buried in the Mission Dolores cemetery, many of them Ohlone and Miwok peoples. Eventually, the cemetery (which is one of only two still within San Francisco’s city limits) was reduced to a quarter of its original size due to neighborhood development. While some bodies were moved to Colma, many unidentified Native American remains were respectfully interred in communal graves. Several prominent early Californians are buried at Mission Dolores including the first governor of California, San Francisco’s first mayor, and America’s first black millionaire.

Don Luis Antonio Arguello, the first-ever governor of Alta California, died and was buried at Mission Dolores in 1830, where his tomb still remains. During World War II, the United States named a ship in his honor, the SS Luis Arguello. Don Francisco de Haro came to San Francisco in 1819 as a lieutenant in the Mexican army. In 1834 he became the city’s first alcalde, or mayor, and was buried in the mission cemetery upon his death in 1849.

Another man buried there, William Alexander Leidesdorff, was a successful black businessman, served as the only Vice Consul to Mexico in United States history, and became hugely wealthy when gold was discovered on his estate shortly before his death in 1848.

Not surprisingly, some of the oldest family names in San Francisco can be found on Mission Dolores headstones. A few of these names have been commemorated in the city’s street names including: Arguello, de Haro, Leidesdorff, Noe, Sanchez and Bernal.

The church connected to Mission Dolores was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, but construction of the new basilica was finished in 1918. Today, Mission Dolores hosts a thriving Roman Catholic parish and parochial school, but it’s the quiet old mission and cemetery that present everybody with the opportunity for an intimate peek into San Francisco’s past.