Rancho Nacional was a Mexican land grant in the

Salinas Valley The Salinas Valley is one of the major valleys and most productive agricultural regions in California. It is located west of the San Joaquin Valley and south of San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley. The Salinas River, which geologically ...

, in present day

Monterey County, California Monterey County ( ), officially the County of Monterey, is a county located on the Pacific coast in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 439,035. The county's largest city and county seat is Salinas. Monte ...

given in 1839 by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to Vicente Cantua. The grant was between the Salinas River and present day Salinas.

History

Vicente Cantua (April 5, 1793 in Fresno, California - 1871 in Monterey, Ca) married Juana Soto (Dec 26, 1802 in Carmel, Monterrey, CA - 1841) in

Monterey Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...

in 1827. He was mayordomo of Rancho El Alisal (Hartnell) in 1836, and administrator of Mission Soledad in 1839. He was granted the two square league Rancho Nacional in 1839. During Spanish rule, the land had been designated as Rancho del Rey San Pedro. The "del Rey" in the name indicated that the land was set aside specifically to provide food for the king's soldiers garrisoned at the nearby

Presidio of Monterey The Presidio of Monterey (POM), located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. Currently, it is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). ...

. Independent Mexico, having no king, changed the name to Rancho Nacional. 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 Nacional 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 ...

to Vincente Cantua in 1866. Report of the Surveyor General 1844 - 1886
In 1851, James Bryant Hill came from

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and leased part of Rancho Salsipuedes. Hill purchased Rancho Nacional, started a settlement known as

Hill Town {{Unreferenced, date=May 2010 A hill town is any citadel town built upon hills to make invasion difficult. Often protected by defensive walls, steep embankments, or cliffs, such hilltop settlements provided natural defenses for their inhabitants. ...

on the Salinas River, and began growing grain. Up until this time, the land had mostly been used to raise cattle. Although he produced record amounts of wheat and barley, Hill ended up losing his holdings.

References

{{California history Nacional Nacional Salinas River (California) Salinas Valley Nacional

History

See also

References