from Spain in 1821, the government secularized the missions and their ranches. To encourage settlement of the land the Mexican governors of California made grants of land to individuals. They divided the Peninsula into huge ranchos, as large as the 35,000-acre Rancho de las Pulgas. (East of the Skyline ridge in the area covered by this guide were the Ranchos Guadalupe, BuriBuri, Feliz, Raimundo de las Pulgas, Martinez, Corte de Madera, Purissima de Concepción, and San Antonio. To the west were the Ranchos San Pedro, Corral de Tierra, Miramontes, Cañada Verde y Arroyo de la Purisima, San Gregorio, Pescadero, Butano, and Punta del Año Nuevo.)
The brief flowering of these Mexican ranchos ended in 1848 when the American flag was raised over California. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, intended to protect the titles of Mexican land grants, failed to do so. Hordes of Americans from the east, eager for land after the discovery of gold, poured into northern California. The great ranchos were soon divided and sold or even usurped by squatters.
On the San Mateo Coastside, American settlers took over the lands from the Mexican rancheros by fair means or foul. By 1853, Andrew Johnston, having come by wagon over the mountains from San Mateo, had settled in a large house (still standing) near present-day Half Moon Bay. In 1855 a toll road was built on this mountain alignment, making it easier to send farm produce to the Bayside towns. Other settlers moved north from Santa Cruz—the Moore family established a homestead in Pescadero and the Steele brothers started a dairy near Punta Año Nuevo. Butter and cheese, shingles, and tanbark were shipped from a variety of rather precarious wharves and chutes.
Webb Ranch nestled at the base of the Portola Valley foothills
Eventually tourists discovered the Coastside, and by 1907 the Ocean Shore Railroad was built south from San Francisco, reaching as far as Tunitas Creek. Another railroad worked north from Santa Cruz, but the two never met. The gap between Tunitas and Swanton (present-day Davenport) was crossed by Stanley Steamer. In 1920, storms washed out parts of the Ocean Shore Railroad and it never was reconstructed.
When modern-day roads were built along the alignments of the earlier railroad tracks, the Coastside settlements grew apace, mainly as “bedroom communities” for Bayside workers. Half Moon Bay is the only incorporated city on the Coastside, but the communities of Montara, Moss Beach, El Granada, and Pescadero are expanding as fast as their limited water supplies allow.
Logging
The Spanish had dealt lightly with the forested Peninsula hills. They felled by ax the redwoods cut to build their missions. In fact, they later expressed concern over unrestrained logging by the Anglos. The greatly increased demand for lumber to build Gold Rush San Francisco brought the first major change to the Sierra Morena, particularly to that part known as the Pulgas Redwoods—the forest above present-day Portola Valley and Woodside. The new owners of these lands logged them heavily with whipsaws. They built sawmills powered first by water, then by steam engines. As many as 50 sawmills operated in these forests, turning out lumber to build San Francisco and then rebuild it after its fires. By 1870 the huge trees, some 10 feet or more in diameter, were gone. Hardly a redwood tree remained standing east of the Skyline, but logging continued in the vast forests on the western slopes. Most of the original giant trees were cut by 1900, but redwoods are fast-growing in this climate, and second-growth trees of marketable size still are being harvested on private lands.
Farming and Ranching
With the redwoods gone in eastern San Mateo County, some of the lower slopes of the mountains were planted with orchards and vineyards. Dairy farms and large estates covered the foothills. During the late 1800s in northern Santa Clara County, ranchers planted vineyards and orchards of plums, apricots, peaches, pears, and cherries on the valley floor and in the lower foothills. This area became one of the most productive fruit-growing areas in the world. The scent of blossoming trees filled the air every spring. Ripening fruits on the trees and trays of apricots, peaches, and prunes drying in the fields made summers colorful in the peaceful orchard country. On western slopes open land became livestock and dairy farms. Later, row crops of artichokes and brussels sprouts were grown in large acreages and greenhouses containing flowers proliferated.
Urbanization and Public Open Space
In eastern San Mateo County, a century of settlement saw the gradual break-up of large estates and the burgeoning of towns. By 1863, tracks for the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad had been laid as far as Palo Alto and soon they extended to San Jose. By 1900, a string of suburban towns had grown up along the railroad, which shaped the growth of the Peninsula until the coming of the automobile.
The Santa Clara Valley orchards survived until the middle years of the 20th century, when people poured into the Peninsula after World War II. Industry expanded in the valley, and orchard after orchard gave way to housing tracts. Towns grew until their borders touched to form the present unbroken urban band along the Bay.
Although houses had been built on the gentler slopes of the eastern foothills, the steeper hillsides, where road building was too difficult, remained wild. By the mid1950s there were still many undeveloped hillsides, forested slopes, and canyons in a relatively natural state. As the concept of public open space evolved, the precipitous canyons and oak-covered hills were seen as welcome breaks between subdivisions. These are the lands that have become parks and open space preserves where miles of trails beckon hikers, equestrians, and bicyclists today. By the 1980s many forests and ranchlands west of the Skyline were acquired for parks and preserves.
In the 1990s and early in this century on the Coastside, the Peninsula Open Space Trust purchased farm lands and resold them to farmers who signed conservation easements that permanently reserved the land for agriculture. POST bought the 5638-acre Cloverdale Coastal Ranch in the late ‘90s and later gave 905 acres to enlarge Butano State Park. Also on the Coastside, Sempervirens Fund purchased an undivided one-half interest in 1800 forested acres along Gazos Creek south of Butano State Park. In 2004 the State of California park system bought some of these acres to add to Butano State Park.
In addition, several private citizens gave sizeable properties to POST, one of which, the Thysen Bald Knob piece, is now part of Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve. More recently, the Mike and Margaret O’Neill family gave 482 acres adjacent to Rancho Corral de Tierra’s southern boundary. Eventually this property will provide an exceptional link to the already vast public lands in the northwest corner of San Mateo County.
San Francisco Watershed Lands
The vast city of San Francisco Watershed lands in the heart of San Mateo County have remained relatively wild since early logging ceased here, their hills spared from development and their reservoirs forming a sparkling chain of lakes. Its 23,000 acres lie between the wooded northern Santa Cruz Mountains and the lower hills to the east. It drains into upper San Mateo Creek, which was dammed in the 1890s. The resultant Crystal Springs Lakes and San Andreas Lake to the north are now water-supply reservoirs for San Francisco and much of the Peninsula.
When San Francisco needed more water than local wells could supply, the city’s Spring Valley Water Company began buying up lands in the Watershed and building reservoirs. In 1862 they dammed Pilarcitos Lake in the northwest part of the Watershed, bringing water by gravity to San Francisco along a 32-mile wooden flume. Next they built the San Andreas Dam and the two Crystal Springs dams. The last of these dams, built across the gorge of San Mateo Creek, was completed in 1896, the engineering feat of its time. Although it is only 1200 feet from the San Andreas Fault rupture of 1906, it withstood the earthquake. Today a road and a trail cross this dam.
When San Francisco’s needs were again outpacing its water supply, the city acquired the private Spring Valley Water Company and started the ambitious project of bringing water from the Sierra Nevada. In 1934 the O'Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy was completed and a pipeline was built across the San Joaquin Valley. Sierra waters flowed into the Crystal Springs lakes through the Pulgas Water Temple, built to celebrate this event. This large water system now provides water to San Francisco, and parts of San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda counties.