Blackbird Valley, earlier known as "Valle de Mocho", is a

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

south of

Mount Mocho Mount Mocho is a summit in the Diablo Range, in Santa Clara County, California Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of th ...

in the

Diablo Range The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley are ...

Santa Clara County, California Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259, as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring Sa ...

. It lies at an elevation of 2,552 foot / 778 meters.

History

Valle Mocho was an overnight stop for droves of horses taken south on

La Vereda del Monte La Vereda del Monte (Spanish language, Spanish for "The Mountain Trail") was a backcountry route through remote regions of the Diablo Range, one of the California Coast Ranges. La Vereda del Monte was the upper part of La Vereda Caballo, (Spanish fo ...

mesteñeros Mesteñeros, or mustang runners, were people in Western North America in the 19th and early 20th century, usually vaqueros or cowboys, that caught, broke and drove wild horses, called mesteños or mustangs, to market in the Spanish and later Mexican ...

and the horse gangs of

Joaquin Murrieta Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo (sometimes spelled Murieta or Murietta) (1829 – July 25, 1853), also called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a Mexican-American figure of disputed historicity. The novel '' The Life and A ...

. According to Frank F. Latta, the Valle de Mocho was named after the Murrieta gang member in charge of their station in the valley, Avalino Martínez. Martinez was known by his nickname, "Mocho" (meaning cut off or short) for his diminutive four feet, four inch, stature. The

Arroyo Mocho Arroyo Mocho is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 stream which originates in the far northeastern corner of Santa Clara County and flows northwesterly into ...

and the nearby peak

were also named after him.Frank F. Latta, JOAQUIN MURRIETA AND HIS HORSE GANGS, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980.

References

{{coord, 37, 26, 31, N, 121, 31, 11, W, display=title Valleys of Santa Clara County, California Diablo Range La Vereda del Monte