Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was a Spanish land concession in present-day

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, ...

, given by Spanish

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 ...

Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga in 1810 to

Jose Antonio Yorba Jose is the English transliteration of the Hebrew and Aramaic name ''Yose'', which is etymologically linked to ''Yosef'' or Joseph. The name was popular during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods. * Jose ben Abin * Jose ben Akabya * Jose the Galil ...

and his nephew Pablo Peralta. The grant extended eastward from the

Santa Ana River The Santa Ana River is the largest river entirely within Southern California in the United States. It rises in the San Bernardino Mountains and flows for most of its length through San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, before cutting throug ...

to the

Santa Ana Mountains The Santa Ana Mountains are a short peninsular mountain range along the coast of Southern California in the United States. They extend for approximately southeast of the Los Angeles Basin largely along the border between Orange and Riverside ...

, with a length of more than . The lands encompass present-day Santa Ana, Orange,

Villa Park Villa Park is a football stadium in Aston, Birmingham, England, with a seating capacity of 42,682. It has been the home of Premier League side Aston Villa since 1897. The ground is less than a mile from both Witton and Aston railway station ...

, Anaheim Hills,

El Modena El Modena is an unincorporated area and neighborhood surrounding El Modena High School and within the city of Orange, California. It is located near and east of the intersection of Hewes Street and Chapman Avenue. Much of the area was annexe ...

, Tustin, Costa Mesa, and a part of Irvine, which was formerly known as

Rancho Lomas de Santiago Rancho Lomas de Santiago was a Mexican land grant given by Mexican Governor Pío Pico to Teodosio Yorba in 1846. The name means "Hills of St. James". The rancho included parts of present-day Irvine and Tustin in what is now eastern Orange Cou ...

and was titled to one of the Yorbas.

History

Portrait_of_Don_Bernardo_Yorba_by_an_unknown_artist

Juan Pablo Grijalva, a Spanish soldier who traveled to Alta California with the De Anza expedition, was the original petitioner for the lands that became known as the "Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana". He died before the grant was approved and the lands went to his son-in-law, José Antonio Yorba and his grandson, Juan Pablo Peralta. On July 1, 1810, the land later named Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana was granted to José Antonio Yorba and his nephew Pablo Peralta by Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga on behalf of the

Spanish Government gl, Goberno de España eu, Espainiako Gobernua , image = , caption = Logo of the Government of Spain , headerstyle = background-color: #efefef , label1 = Role , data1 = Executive power , label2 = Established , d ...

.Dominguez (1985), pg. 11. This was the only land grant in present-day Orange County given under Spanish Rule which were rare during this time. This was only two and a half months before the start of the war for Mexican Independence (1810–1821). The surrounding land grants or ranchos were granted by the Mexican government after Mexican independence in 1821. The lands encroached upon the village of

Puhú Puhú (''Payómkawichum'': “its arrow place”) was a major residential village in the Santa Ana Mountains shared by the Tongva, Acjachemen, Payómkawichum, and Serrano near Santiago Peak. The village resided approximately 600m above sea leve ...

, shared by the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

Acjachemen The Acjachemen (, alternate spelling: Acagchemem) are an Indigenous people of California. They historically lived south of what is known as Aliso Creek and north of the Las Pulgas Canyon in what are now the southern areas of Orange County and ...

, Payómkawichum, and Serrano, that had been established long before the arrival of the Spanish. In 1832, the village people were massacred after a raid of American and Mexican fur trappers led by

William Wolfskill William Wolfskill (1798–1866) was an American-Mexican pioneer, cowboy, and agronomist in Los Angeles, California beginning in the 1830s. He had earned money for land in a decade as a fur trapper near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had become ...

. José Antonio Yorba built an elaborate adobe hacienda, El Refugio (the Refuge), located near present-day First and Sullivan Streets in western Santa Ana. With the

Mexican Cession The Mexican Cession ( es, Cesión mexicana) is the region in the modern-day southwestern United States that Mexico originally controlled, then ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 after the Mexican–American W ...

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 ...

, 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 Santiago de Santa Ana 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 ...

in 1852, and the grant was patented to Bernardo, Teodoro and Ramón Yorba in 1883. In 1854, the Yorba family sold Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana to José Antonio Andrés Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda later lost the land due to bankruptcy caused by fighting to uphold his land claims in court. In 1869, William Spurgeon and Ward Bradford purchased of the ranch to form the city of Santa Ana. It became the seat of government for the County in 1889. The ranch further disintegrated with purchases by James Irvine, and James McFadden who built the McFadden Wharf in 1888. Pleasants, Adelene (1931)

Present day

Modern use of the Santiago name

* Casa de Santiago (neighborhood), Santa Ana, California * Rancho Santiago Community College District, Santa Ana * Santiago Park, Santa Ana * Santiago Street, Santa Ana * Santiago Canyon,

Silverado, California Silverado is an unincorporated community in Silverado Canyon, which is located in the Santa Ana Mountains in eastern Orange County, California. Portions of the town sit on a former Mexican land grant Rancho Lomas de Santiago. Silverado is loc ...

Santiago Canyon College Santiago Canyon College is a public community college in Orange, California. Along with Santa Ana College, Santiago is one of two campuses in the Rancho Santiago Community College District (RSCCD). History In 1980, The Irvine Company sold 30 ac ...

, Orange, California – RSCCD * Santiago Canyon Trail, Orange, CA –

Corona, California Corona ( Spanish for "Crown") is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 157,136, up from 152,374 at the 2010 census. The cities of Norco and Riverside lie to the north and no ...

* Santiago Communities * Santiago Corporation * Santiago Creek, Orange – Santa Ana * Santiago High School,

Garden Grove, California Garden Grove is a city in northern Orange County, California, United States, located just southwest of Disneyland (located in Anaheim, CA). The population was 171,949 at the 2020 census. State Route 22, also known as the Garden Grove Freeway, ...

* Santiago Hills (neighborhood) Orange, California * Santiago Hills Elementary,

Irvine, California Irvine () is a master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on December 28, 197 ...

* Santiago Hills Park, Orange * Santiago Oaks Regional Park, Orange * Santiago Peak,

* Santiago Strings, a Pacific Symphony youth ensemble

Historic sites of the Rancho

* Diego Sepúlveda Adobe

Modern development of the Rancho

Besides Santa Ana, other cities and unincorporated communities formed on the old Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana are

Santa Ana Heights Santa Ana Heights is a community in Orange County, California. The eastern part is located within the city limits of Newport Beach. The community is surrounded by John Wayne Airport and Costa Mesa. Santa Ana Heights is zoned for more moderate inco ...

, Orange, Costa Mesa, Tustin, and

Olive The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ' ...

. The Rancho Santiago Community College District is located in Santa Ana and is composed of

Santa Ana College Santa Ana College is a public community college in Santa Ana, California. History In 1915, Santa Ana Junior College opened its doors to 25 students as a department of Santa Ana High School. It was the second community college founded in Ora ...

and

in Orange.

Notes

References

*Beers, Henry Putney, (1979). "Spanish & Mexican Records of the American Southwest : A Bibliographical Guide to Archive and Manuscript Sources", Tucson : University of Arizona Press *Davila, Amelia L., (1893). "Historic Yorba", ''Santa Ana Weekly Blade'' *Dominguez, Arnold O., (1985). "José Antonio Yorba I", 2nd Ed., Orange County Historical Society *Pleasants, Adelene (1931). "History of Orange County, California. Vol. 1", Los Angeles, CA : J. R. Finnell & Sons Publishing Company