Rancho Santa Rosa (Estrada) facts for kids
Rancho Santa Rosa was a huge piece of land, about 13,184 acres (which is about 53 square kilometers), given out by the Mexican government a long time ago. It's located in what is now San Luis Obispo County, California.
This land was given in 1841 by Governor Juan Alvarado to a person named Julian Estrada. The land stretched along the Pacific coast, from San Simeon Creek in the north down to the town of Harmony in the south. It also included the area where the town of Cambria is today.
History of Rancho Santa Rosa
Julian Estrada (born in 1813, died in 1871) was the person who received the Rancho Santa Rosa land. He was born in Monterey. His father, José Mariano Estrada, also received a large land grant called Rancho Buena Vista.
Before it became Rancho Santa Rosa, this land was used by Mission San Miguel for grazing their animals. In 1841, Julian Estrada was officially granted this land, which was about three square leagues in size. A league was a way to measure land back then. In 1842, Julian Estrada married Nicolasa Gajiola. He later became a supervisor for San Luis Obispo County in 1860 and 1861, which is like being a local government official. His brother, José Ramón Estrada, also received two large land grants called Rancho San Simeon and Rancho El Toro.
After the Mexican-American War, California became part of the United States in 1848. The peace agreement, called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, said that the land grants given by Mexico would still be valid. To make sure these land claims were official under U.S. law, Julian Estrada filed a claim for Rancho Santa Rosa in 1852. This was required by a law called the Land Act of 1851. His ownership of the land was officially confirmed in 1865.
In 1858, Julian Estrada borrowed money and used his rancho as a guarantee for the loan. The loan was from a lawyer named Domingo Pujol, who was from Spain and lived in San Francisco. When Estrada couldn't pay back the money in 1862, Pujol took over most of the rancho. Estrada was allowed to keep about 1,500 acres (about 6 square kilometers) for himself. Pujol then divided the land he took and sold it off in smaller pieces. Some of this land was used to start the town of Cambria.
Hearst Family Acquires Land
In 1865, a very successful miner named George Hearst (born in 1820, died in 1891) started buying land in this area. George Hearst was the father of the famous newspaper owner, William Randolph Hearst, and he later became a U.S. Senator. His first big land purchases were most of Rancho Piedra Blanca and Rancho San Simeon.
In 1865, George Hearst tried to buy almost all of Rancho Santa Rosa from Julian Estrada, except for about 160 acres (about 0.6 square kilometers). However, Estrada didn't actually have the right to sell all that land because Domingo Pujol was in the process of taking it due to the unpaid loan. Hearst sued to get the land he thought he bought, but in the end, he only managed to get about 1,340 acres (about 5.4 square kilometers) from Estrada's original holdings. When Julian Estrada passed away in 1871, his son, Francisco, took care of the remaining 160 acres that the family still owned.
In 1876, Francisco and his family decided to leave the area. They sold their remaining 160 acres of Rancho Santa Rosa to George Hearst, adding it to his growing land empire.
