La Vareda 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 Trail"), used by mesteñeros from the early 1840s to drive Alta California horses to Sonora for sale.Frank F. Latta, JOAQUIN MURRIETA AND HIS HORSE GANGS, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980.

From its northern beginning at Point of Timber on the Sacramento River Delta near modern-day Brentwood, the trail traveled south to the Livermore Valley. It passed nearby east of Alisal (now part of Pleasanton, California) up into the mountains on Crane Ridge, then continued south through the San Antonio Valley onto the rugged backcountry divide of the Diablo Range, traversing what is now Henry Coe State Park and crossing Pacheco Pass. It continued southward to a mountain ranch on Cantua Creek where mustangs and stolen horses were gathered by Joaquin Murrieta's horse gang before they drove them down the rest of La Vereda Caballo to Sonora for sale.

At Poso de Chane east of present-day Coalinga, La Vereda del Monte linked to other roads and trails of La Vereda Caballo such as El Camino Viejo, or another across the valley to the east to the Kern River and Kern Lake, then through Old Tejon Pass, south through Southern California across Antelope Valley and east along the foot of north side of the San Gabriel Mountains before crossing to a spot near Rancho Cucamonga. From there the drove went by various routes, depending on available water, to cross the Colorado Desert into Baja California and the crossings of the Colorado River into what was then Sonora (before the Gadsden Purchase), then across the Sonoran Desert on the Camino del Diablo to Caborca and south into Sonora where the horses were sold.

La Vereda del Monte was used by mesteñeros and horse thieves most notably by Joaquin Murrieta's Five Joaquins Gang as a route for driving mustangs and stolen horses from Contra Costa County and the upper Central Valley southward toward Mexico, unobserved by authorities. Murrieta was reportedly killed by California Rangers at the Arroyo de Cantua, after they had found and followed the Vereda to his gathering place there on the trail where he and his gang held and organized their horse herd for the drive to Sonora.

Stations Along The Route Of La Vereda del Monte

* Estación primero, Located in Contra Costa County northwest of Point of Timber on Arroyo del Sur, was the uppermost of the gathering points of mustangs for the drove down the Vereda del Monte to Cantua Creek.
* Estación segundo: Las Tinajas, , a watering place and corral with a supply of relief saddle horses, and occasional captured mustangs to add to the drove. The location is at large outcrops of Vaqueros Sandstone, called Murrieta Rocks, about a mile northeast of Brushy Peak just within the southern bounds of the Rancho Cañada de los Vaqueros. From the east the outcrop overlooks a spring in an eastern tributary arroyo to the upper Kellogg Creek that flows down from Brushy Peak. The original name Las Tinajas, (The Jars), refers to the waterholes to be found eroded into the sandstone on top of the outcrops.
* Estación tercero: Located along Crane Ridge, at a waterhole in the Arroyo Mocho, in the vicinity of Mud Springs. Fresh saddle horses were stationed here. Between droves the band gathered in horses from the plain beyond Corral Hollow at La Centinela for the next drove. The arroyo was named Mocho after the nickname of the custodian of this and the next station near the source of the arroyo.
* Estación cuarto: Valle de Mocho, 1st overnight stop in what is now known as Blackbird Valley, south of Mount Mocho. Horses captured on the plain to the east opposite Lone Tree, Hospital, Kern and Ingram Canyons were brought here for the drove as well as horses from the lower Santa Clara Valley as far up the east bay side as the Rancho San Antonio (Peralta) and Rancho San Leandro. The Valle de Mocho was named after the man in charge of the station, Avalino Martínez, known by his nickname as "Mocho," (meaning cut off or short) for his diminutive four feet, four inch, stature. The Arroyo Mocho, and the nearby peak, Mount Mocho is also named after him.
* Estación quinto: In Adobe Valley was a brush corral that held captured horses taken near Arroyos del Puerto, Salado Grande and Saladillo and brought up Salado Grande and from near Latta Creek

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