Rancho Santa Rosa was a 47,815-acre (193.50 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Riverside County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pio Pico to Juan Moreno.[1] At the time of the US patent, Rancho Santa Rosa was a part of San Diego County. Riverside County was created by the California Legislature in 1893 by taking land from both San Bernardino and San Diego Counties.[2][3]
The Santa Rosa Plateau became Rancho Santa Rosa under an 1846 Mexican land grant to cattle and sheep rancher Juan Moreno.[4]
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 Rancho Santa Rosa was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852,[5] and the grant was patented to Juan Moreno in 1872.[6]
Moreno sold the rancho to neighboring Rancho La Laguna owner Augustin Machado in 1855. In 1876, Rancho Santa Rosa was sold to Englishman John Dear, who had sent his son, Parker, from England to inspect the rancho lands. Following flood events that twice destroyed the railroad connection of the California Southern Railroad with San Diego, Parker Dear was forced to put the ranch into receivership in 1894. Walter Vail, already a successful ranch owner in Arizona and owner of Santa Rosa Island, bought Rancho Santa Rosa in 1904. The Vails continued to operate their cattle ranch for the next sixty years. In 1964, the Vails sold the ranch to the Kaiser Steel Company, which master-planned Rancho California - the communities that today comprise the cities of Temecula and Murrieta.
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