Author: June Morrall

(Photo: The bandit Tiburcio Vasquez, whose uncle by the same name, owned the Corral de Tierra, stretching from Miramar to Half Moon Bay).

The Coastside was so isolated that the bandit Tiburcio Vasquez could visit his uncle on the remote Corral de Tierra without fear of being arrested by the authorities. He was finally captured in San Jose. The sheriff printed invitation announcing his execution on Friday, March 19, 1875.

(Photo: Guerrero Farmhouse, later a hotel, Montara)

Francisco Guerrero continued to spend a great deal of time in San Francisco. In 1850, he was murdered as he stood near the corner of Mission and 12th Streets. The fatal injury occurred when a man stalking him on horseback struck him in the head with a slingshot.

On April 12, 1863, as the ranchero Tiburcio Vasquez sat near a window at a Half Moon Bay saloon, a volley of gunshots rang out. When the dust cleared, Vasquez was declared dead–and the murderers escaped.

It was later reported that there may have been a connection between the Guerrero and Vasquez murders. They had appeared as prosecution witnesses in an infamous land fraud case.

Although Candelario Miramontes did not live to see the outcome of the U.S. war with Mexico, all of his daughter Carmelita’s children were born in the adobe house on Mill Street in Half Moon Bay.

Descendants of these famous early Spanish families still thrive throughout California. Coastside street signs and geographical landmarks carry their names, a constant reminder of Half Moon Bay’s Spanish heritage.

(Photo: The Johnston House before it was restored. The historic house is open to the public–check with the HMB Chamber of Commerce for the schedule).

Few, if anyone, had managed to maneuver wheeled vehicles of any kind over that mountainous barrier. But the Johnston brothers perservered and triumphed over the geographical obstacles by gingerly lowering the wagons with ropes.

Half Moon Bay’s Spanish-speaking residents welcomed James Johnston and his Spanish bride, Petra. He further ingratiated himself with the locals by constructing a real American house, a “saltbox-style” farmhouse that was used as a social gathering place for Spanish and American guests.

Known as the “White House of Half Moon Bay”, the landmark has been beautifully preserved by the Johnston House Foundation.

Miramontes’ adobe house–where his midwie daughter, Carmelita lived after her marriage to Francisco Gonzalez, a ranchero’s son from Pescadero–stood on Mill Street, east of Main in Half Moon Bay. Tiburcio Vasquez built his five-room adobe on nearby Pilarcitos Creek and Francisco Guerrero erected an adobe on a hillside northeast of Princeton.

But it was Vasquez and Guerrero’s huge Corral de Tierra that evoked notions of the romantic Spanish past. Round-up time was the occasion for festive rodeos lasting for days. It was time for celebration. There was feasting and music as the vaqueros vied to prove their superior horsemanship.

While they enjoyed the competition, the vaqueros still had business to do. They lassoed cattle chosen for slaughter, branding the other animals and releasing them to roam for another year on the Corral de Tierra.

The “bandit” Tiburcio Vasquez, not to be confused with the ranchero by the same name.

On one of the happy occasions at the Corral de Tierra, a member of the Miramontes family wa shocked to see the mischievous bandit Tiburcio Vasquez, the ranchero’s nephew. The young bandit reflected the darker side of relations between the Mexicans and their new neighbors, the Americans. This Vasquez thirsted for revenge, scouring the countryside stealing horses and robbing stagecoaches.

Photo: courtesy San Mateo County History Museum. Please visit the museum at the historic Redwood City Courthouse in Redwood City.

…To Be Continued…

< <img id="image1052" src="http://www.halfmoonbaymemories.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/miramontes.jpg" alt="miramontes.jpg" Photo: The Miramontes Family

The boundary line between the two ranchos was Medio Creek, which runs through present-day Miramar, later the locatio of a busy 19th century wharf were steamers docked.

Guerrero and Vasquez were acquainted with Candelario Miramontes. When Miramontes applied for a 4,424-acre rancho, the crudely drawn map included the present-day town of Half Moon Bay. Miramontes named his rancho ‘San Benito’ and that was what Half Moon Bay was called for decades.

Before the war erupted between the US and Mexico in 1846, the rancheros were absentee landlords. Cut off by insurmountable geographical barriers with no passable roads, they found little to attract them in Half Moon Bay. Compared with the Coastside, San Francisco wasw a busy hamlet–but Miramontes was able to grow corn, peas and potatoes near what is now the downtown area.

The Mexican-American War turned the ranchero’s lives upside down. They were now threatened by the growing American influence. Just as resentment against Spanish rule produce the renegade Indian, Pomponio, the mounting friction between the Mexicans and the Americans who challenged them, created the notorious bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, a counterpart to Pomponio.

Coincidentally, the outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez carried the same name as his respectable uncle, the owner of the Corral de Tierra. But the unruly nephew was to become a folk hero, a Mexican version of Robin Hood. Some said Vasquez was driven to his outlaw existence by the manner in which the Americans treated the Mexicans as inferiors while dancing with their women.

As the US war with Mexico neared, Guerrero, Miramontes and Vasquez made the life-saving decision to flee San Francisco for their adobe houses near Half Moon Bay. In the late 1840s, about 70 people, including local Indians, comprised the entire population of the Coastside, according to the archives of the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City.