Half Moon Bay Memories

< <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.

Photo: Rancho Corral de Tierra, courtesy San Mateo County

The Coastside rancheros found San Francisco a dangerous place to live in the 1840s.

Political turmoil permeated the air–the United States was preparing for war with Mexico–and California was the ultimate prize. As part of the Mexican regime, the rancheros–Francisco Guerrero, Candelario Miramontes Tiburcio Vasquez–were vulnerble and feared for their lives. So they sought haven on the Coastside where enemies would be unable to find them. The Coastside was so remote tht only the mountain lions could track them.

California had already weathered a change of rule as the baton of power was passed from Spain to Mexico. Now, as Americans moved in, a more significant cultural and political change was on the way. This was the setting on the eve of the Gold Rush that brought hoards of Americans to the Golden State.

Guerrero, Miramontes and Vasquez knew one another–they had been stationed in San Francisco under Mexican rule. But most likely it was Vasquez who knew the secret route into isolated Half Moon Bay. He had been the supervisor of Mission Dolores’ livestock and ws familiar with the Corral de Tierra, a 7, 766-acre piece of breathtaking grazing land stretching from Montara to Half Moon Bay.

The Corral de Tierra was so named because the terrain formed a natural enclosure.

Guerrero, Miramontes and Vasquez shared much in common. They had witnessed the dismantling of the harsh
Spanish mission system under which so many Indians had perished. They benefited from the demise of this system as loyal military officers and other deserving individuals were rewarded with tracts of land known as ranchos.

Vasquez applied for and received the southern portion of the Corral de Tierra. Francisco Guerrero, who had held various political positions in San Francisco, also applied for and received the northern section of the Corral de Tierra.

….To Be Continued…