A land of abundance, of milk and ...

The Spanish developed Mission Dolores at the northern tip of the Peninsula in the 1770s. San Francisco was a great location for a port and a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t have wanted to live there. The wind blew constantly, shifting and rearranging the sand dunes, making the planting of crops for food a mission-impossible. There was only a limited supply of fresh water and no trees to supply lumber for building needs. The good fathers of the Mission turned an agricultural eye to San Pedro Valley (Pacifica) where the soil was much better and there were Indians to supply the labor. When disease decimated the natives, another farming area was scouted out.

Farther down the Peninsula, an area along El Camino Real called San Matheo (later spelled San Mateo) was put to good use for growing food and raising sheep and cattle. Two padres were assigned to guide the 30 or so Christianized Indians (neophytes) in the arts and crafts of making adobe bricks to use in building walls and structures, and of spinning, weaving, candle-making and cooking. The Indians were taught farming and how to butcher cattle for meat, hides and tallow. The San Mateo area had good soil and a climate to match, with clean and abundant water. And there was a good, well-used two-way trail, one leading to Mission Santa Clara and the other way to Mission Dolores. Crops were grown in such abundance that in the 1790s a hospice/granary was built on the north side of the San Mateo Creek to store the grain. By the 1800s, there were 200 acres of grain, with a small outlying area for raising more corn, wheat and vegetables. In 1808, an earthquake leveled the original adobe-brick hospice (asistencia), and another larger one was built nearby to replace it. In 1810, more than 11,000 bushels of grain were harvested, along with beans, peas and lentils.

Ten-thousand sheep grazed here and 10,000 cattle. It was a land of abundance, of milk and (if they’d had bees) — honey.

Rancho San Mateo was an area of approximately 6,500 acres. It was bordered on the north by Rancho Buri Buri (Sanchez/Edgehill Drive, Burlingame), to the San Mateo Creek (Mills Hospital area) and from the Bay (Coyote Point — which was isolated by a marsh) to the San Andreas Valley to the west. El Camino Real, oriented north/south along the base of the hills, split the property. A creek ran west/east along what is now Burlingame Avenue.

The Sanchez family tried unsuccessfully to acquire the land to add to their Rancho Buri Buri. At first, the California governors did not want to evict the Indians who were living there as the original objective of the church had been to Christianize the heathens and make them self-sustaining by giving them back some land on which to live and grow food.

This aura of generosity did not last. Neither did the Indians. By the 1840s, almost no native Americans were still living there. A few had drifted off into the hills.

In 1846, the last Mexican governor of Alta, Calif. — Pio Pico — granted the land to his clerk, Cayetano Arenas, because (even then), California was cash-strapped and the only way they could pay Arenas what he was owed was to give him a land grant. Arenas, in turn, sold the land for $25,000 (or about $4 an acre) to merchants W. D. M. Howard and Henry Mellus, who had become wealthy selling supplies to Gold Rushers. Howard then bought Mellus’ share of the land and created one of the first great estates on the Peninsula. He found it necessary to evict the last remaining Indians from the Rancho. On Sept. 18, 1855, the claim for Rancho San Mateo was confirmed.

Correction: In last week’s Sanchez Adobe column, the phone number was incorrect. It should have read (650) 359-1462.