Rancho Dos Pueblos

Rancho Dos Pueblos was a 15,535-acre (62.87 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Santa Barbara County, California given in 1842 by Governor Juan Alvarado to Nicolas A. Den.[1] The land extended along the Pacific coast to the northwest of the pueblo and Presidio of Santa Barbara, from Goleta Slough west to Dos Pueblos Canyon. [2][3]

Contents

History

Rancho Dos Pueblos was granted by the Mexican Government to Nicolas A. Den (1812 - 1862) in 1842. Den was an Irish immigrant who moved to Santa Barbara in 1836. Den had studied to become a medical doctor in Dublin, and although not yet graduated, became the first medical doctor in the Santa Barbara area. He married Rosa Hill, a daughter of Daniel A. Hill. He died in 1862, leaving ten children.[4] In his will Den bequeathed the western half of the original Rancho Dos Pueblos grant to his wife Rosa Den, and the remaining half was placed in trust to be apportioned equally to their ten children when they came of age.

With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Dos Pueblos was filed with the Public Land Commissionin 1852,[5] and the grant was patented to Nicolas A. Den in 1877.[6]

In 1869, Rosa Den sold the easternmost 3,600 acres (15 km2) to Colonel W.W. Hollister (1818 - 1886) who named it Rancho Glen Annie in honor of his wife, Annie James Hollister. The minor heirs of Nicolas A. Den were still alive and there was a question of whether the property could be sold. Den's descendant Alfonso Den inherited the land now called Isla Vista; he and some of his nine siblings were plaintiffs in a law suit, because when they were minors their land had been illegally sold to Hollister in 1869. San Francisco lawyer, Thomas B. Bishop, who specialized in transfers of Mexican land rights, sued Hollister on behalf of the Den children in 1876, and won the case in 1890.[7][8] Bishop received much of the land owned by the Den children as a legal fee - land now called Bishop Ranch, near Glen Annie Road in the city of Goleta.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco
  2. ^ Diseño del Rancho Los Dos Pueblos
  3. ^ Santa Barbara County Rancho Map
  4. ^ Nicolas A. Den
  5. ^ United States. District Court (California : Southern District) Land Case 150 SD
  6. ^ Report of the Surveyor General 1844 - 1886
  7. ^ Tompkins, Walter A. (1960). Santa Barbara's Royal Rancho: The Fabulous History of Los Dos Pueblos. Howell-North, Berkeley, CA. 
  8. ^ Hoover, Mildred B.; Hero & Ethel Rensch, and William N. Abeloe (1966). Historic Spots in California. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804744829. 
  9. ^ Early History of Bishop Ranch

External links


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