Rancho Atascadero was a Mexican land grant in present-day San Luis Obispo County, California. It was granted in 1842 by Governor Juan Alvarado to Trifon Garcia. The grant extended along the Salinas River and encompassed present-day

Atascadero Atascadero (Spanish language, Spanish for "Mire") is a city in San Luis Obispo County, California, San Luis Obispo County, California, about equidistant from Los Angeles and San Francisco on U.S. Route 101 in California, U.S. Route 101. Atascade ...

History

The one square league grant was from the secularized holdings of

Mission San Miguel Arcángel Mission San Miguel Arcángel is a Spanish mission in San Miguel, California. It was established on July 25, 1797 by the Franciscan order, on a site chosen specifically due to the large number of Salinan Indians that inhabited the area, whom th ...

. Trifon Garcia was a son of Ynocente Garcia, who was administrator at Mission San Miguel. With the

cession The act of cession is the assignment of property to another entity. In international law it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty. Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines cession as "a surrender; a giving up; a relinquishment of jurisdictio ...

of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ( es, Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo), officially the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 ...

provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Atascadero was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was

patented A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

Henry Haight Henry Haight (1820–1869) was an American exchange banker and pioneer. He was the manager of the Banking House of Page, Bacon & Co. in San Francisco during the California gold rush era. He is the uncle of Henry Huntly Haight (1825–1878), tent ...

in 1860. A second claim was filed by Maria Antonia Ortega in 1853, but was rejected by the Commission due to lack of evidence of a grant. The rancho was sold in 1864 to Martin Murphy Jr. (1807–1884) and his wife Mary Bulger Murphy (d.1892) of Sunnyvale, who had come to California with the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party in 1844. The Murphys turned over running of the rancho to their son Patrick Murphy, who was a General in the

California National Guard The California National Guard is part of the National Guard of the United States, a dual federal-state military reserve force. The CA National Guard has three components: the CA Army National Guard, CA Air National Guard, and CA State Guard. ...

. Patrick Washington Murphy (1840–1901) operated Rancho Atascadero, and the adjacent Rancho Asuncion, and

Rancho Santa Margarita :''This article refers to the San Luis Obispo County, California, land grant. For the city of Rancho Santa Margarita, see Rancho Santa Margarita, California'' Rancho Santa Margarita was a Mexican land grant in the Santa Lucia Mountains, in ...

, altogether comprising about , from his Rancho Santa Margarita headquarters. In 1912, Edward Gardner Lewis, a successful magazine publisher, bought Rancho Atascadero from J.H. Henry. Lewis founded the utopian, planned community of Atascadero in 1913.

References

{{San Luis Obispo County, California

Atascadero, California Santa Lucia Range

History

See also

References