Rancho San Pablo was a

land grant A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...

in present-day

Contra Costa County, California ) of the San Francisco Bay , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = California , subdivision_type2 ...

given in 1823 by Governor Luís Antonio Argüello to

Francisco María Castro Don Francisco María Castro (1770–1831), nicknamed El Curioso, was a Californio landowner in an area of Alta California which later became part of Contra Costa County, California. Biography Francisco María Castro was the third son of Mari ...

(1775–1831), a former soldier at the

San Francisco Presidio The Presidio of San Francisco (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco or The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, and is part ...

and one-time ''alcalde'' of the

Pueblo of San José San Jose, California, is the third largest city in the state, and the largest of all cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California, with a population of 1,021,795. Site chosen by Anza For thousands of years before the arrival of ...

. The grant was reconfirmed by Governor

José Figueroa José Figueroa (1792 – 29 September 1835), was a General and the Mexican Governor of Alta California from 1833 to 1835. He wrote the first book to be published in California. Background and governorship Figueroa was a Mestizo of Spanish a ...

in 1834 to the heirs of Francisco Castro, including Víctor Castro. The San Pablo grant covered what is now Richmond, San Pablo, El Cerrito, and

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensington Garden ...

in western Contra Costa County.

History

The land had previously been grazing land for cattle belonging to the Misión Dolores, but was secularized by the new Mexican republic. Francisco Maria Castro lived there with his wife María Gabriela Berreyesa and family from the late 1820s until his death in 1831. Governor of Mexican

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...

, Juan Alvarado, married one of the Castro daughters in 1839. After his term as governor was completed, they retired to her family property on Rancho San Pablo. 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 Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1 ...

, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho San Pablo was filed with the

Public Land Commission The California Land Act of 1851 (), enacted following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the admission of California as a state in 1850, established a three-member Public Land Commission to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican ...

by Joaquín Ysidro Castro 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 ...

to Joaquín Ysidro Castro in 1878.Rancho San Pablo History
/ref>

References

{{History of Richmond, California San Pablo San Pablo Richmond, California San Pablo San Pablo