The community of San Antonio Valley, also called San Antonio or San Antone, is located along 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 a ...

in eastern

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 ...

. The locale is bordered by

Alameda County Alameda County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and 21st most populous nationally. The county seat is Oakland. A ...

to the north and

Stanislaus County Stanislaus County ( ; ) is a county located in the San Joaquin Valley of the U.S. state of California. As of 2023, its estimated population is 564,404. The county seat is Modesto. Stanislaus County makes up the Modesto metropolitan statistic ...

to the east. The sparsely populated area is located at the junction of San Antonio Valley Road, Mines Road, and Del Puerto Canyon Road. San Antonio Valley Road and Del Puerto Canyon Road are legislatively part of

California State Route 130 State Route 130 (SR 130) is a state highway in Santa Clara County, California that connects San Jose with the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton. The highway follows Mount Hamilton Road, a narrow two-lane highway that goes through the Diablo ...

but have not been adopted by

CalTrans The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an Executive (government), executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the Government of California#State agencies, cabinet-level California State Tran ...

. The area includes the San Antonio Valley Ecological Reserve, a 3,282-acre nature preserve created by a

Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in ...

purchase of land from local rancher, Keith Hurner, and known for its herd of

tule elk The tule elk (''Cervus canadensis nannodes'') is a subspecies of elk found only in California, ranging from the grasslands and marshlands of the Central Valley to the grassy hills on the coast. The subspecies name derives from the tule (), ...

History and Variant Names

The San Antonio Valley appears to have been a transitional area between the native

Ohlone The Ohlone ( ), formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the l ...

cultures from the San Francisco-Monterey region and the

Yokuts The Yokuts (previously known as MariposasPowell, 1891:90–91.) are an ethnic group of Native Americans native to central California. Before European contact, the Yokuts consisted of up to 60 tribes speaking several related languages. Yokuts ...

of the

San Joaquin River The San Joaquin River ( ; ) is the longest river of Central California. The long river starts in the high Sierra Nevada and flows through the rich agricultural region of the northern San Joaquin Valley before reaching Suisun Bay, San Francis ...

watershed. The Ohlone are speculated to have arrived in the Bay Area around 500 A.D. when they displaced Hokan speaking populations already in the region. On April 5, 1776, the

de Anza Expedition Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (July 6 or 7, 1736 – December 19, 1788) was a Novohispanic/Mexican expeditionary leader, military officer, and politician primarily in California and New Mexico under the Spanish Empire. He is credited as on ...

called the area El Cañada de San Vicente. The 1956 Thomas Brothers map spells it San Antone. This spelling mimics the way it is pronounced in common, modern usage by locals. It was spelled San Antone on the 1924 "Mount Boardman, California" U.S. Geological Survey 15-minute quadrangle.Frank F. Latta, JOAQUIN MURRIETA AND HIS HORSE GANGS, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980.

La Vereda del Monte La Vereda del Monte (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 for "The Horse Tr ...

traversed the valley on its way between the

Sacramento River Delta Sacramento ( or ; ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 popul ...

and the Central Valley and was used by

Joaquin Murrieta Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo (sometimes misspelled Murieta or Murietta) (c. 1829 – July 25, 1853), also called the Robin Hood of the West or the Robin Hood of El Dorado, was a Mexicans, Mexican figure of disputed historicity. The novel ''The Lif ...

to transport stolen horses included among legally obtained mustangs taken by

mesteñeros Mesteñeros, or mustang runners, were people in Mexico, and later on in the United States, in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th century, usually vaqueros or cowboys, that caught, broke and drove wild horses, called mesteños or Mustang hor ...

in the

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; Spanish language in California, Spanish: ''Valle de San Joaquín'') is the southern half of California's Central Valley (California), Central Valley. Famed as a major breadbasket, the San Joaquin Valley is an importa ...

. San Antonio Valley was one of the places along the Vereda where these horses were picked up from holding places nearby in Adobe Canyon and

Isabel Valley Isabel Valley is a valley in the Diablo Range in Santa Clara County, California. It is also known as Santa Ysabel Valley. The mouth of Isabel Valley lies at an elevation of . Its head is at at an elevation of . History Isabel Valley was used by ...

. The U.S. Postal Service established a Deforest Post Office in the area during 1892. It was moved within the area in 1897, 1906, and finally closed in 1909. Another 1924 map calls a group of buildings along San Antonio Creek, Deforest. The name comes from Ransford S. Deforest, the first Postmaster in the community.

Geography

The community lies in the ''San Antonio Valley'', at elevation . The valley is traversed by San Antonio Creek, which flows northwesterward to

Arroyo Valle Arroyo Valle or Arroyo Del Valle is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 westward-flowing stream that begins in northeastern Santa Clara County, Californi ...

, part of the

Alameda Creek Alameda Creek () is a large perennial stream in the San Francisco Bay Area. The creek runs for from a lake northeast of Packard Ridge to the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay by way of Niles Canyon and a flood control channel. Along its course, ...

watershed.

Community

The community includes a

CAL FIRE The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, colloquially known as CAL FIRE, is the fire department of the California Natural Resources Agency in the U.S. state of California. It is responsible for fire protection in various are ...

station at 47405 Mines Road. The station is called, Sweetwater - Station 25 and is part of the Santa Clara Ranger Unit, (

Firescope FIRESCOPE (backronym: Firefighting Resources of Southern California Organized for Potential Emergencies) is a system for efficient interagency resource coordination system for fire and other emergencies in the southern California region of the ...

mutual aid identifier SCU). There is a restaurant at the junction of the three roads (Mines, San Antonio Valley, Del Puerto Canyon), appropriately called The Junction Bar and Grill. This restaurant serves as a community center as well as a stopping-off point for the many motorcycles, bicycles, and tourists that travel the roads.

Telephony

The area was served by manual telephone service until deregulation forced the arrival of dial service in the early 1980s. Prior to this, a non-dial Western Electric 1A1 coin telephone served on San Antonio Road about one mile east of

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton (California), Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The ...

. Its telephone number was ''San Antonio California Toll Station Number 3''. Today, wired telephone numbers for the area follow the format (

408 __NOTOC__ Year 408 ( CDVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Bassus and Philippus (or, less frequently, year 1161 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination ...

) 897-xxxx. The telephone utility serving this area today is

Frontier Communications Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. is an American telecommunications company. Known as Citizens Utilities Company until 2000, Citizens Communications Company until 2008, and Frontier Communications Corporation until 2020, as a communications pr ...

Citizens Telecommunications Company of California Citizens Telecommunications Company of California Inc. is a telephone operating company of Frontier Communications based in Elk Grove, California. It was established in 1993 to acquire 5,000 access lines from GTE. In 1996, it acquired 20,000 acces ...

References

Sources

*''Santa Clara County Street Atlas'', (1956 Edition), George Thomas.

Books about the area

''Red Mountain: The Rise and Fall of a Magnesite Mining Empire, 1900-1947'' by Robert W. P. Cutler, Morris Publishing, 2001,
''I Made a Lot of Tracks'' by Phil Stadtler, CP Media, Bonanza, OR, 2007,

External links

Map of San Antonio ValleyCAL FIREArea map (Nature Conservancy).This area is part of the Nature Conservancy Mount Hamilton Project.Photographs of San Antonio Valley taken from the Lick Observatory from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Santa Clara County, California Diablo Range Unincorporated communities in California Valleys of Santa Clara County, California La Vereda del Monte