Rancho Potrero de Santa Clara was a Mexican land grant in present day Santa Clara County, California given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to James Alexander Forbes.Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco The name refers to the "pasture lands" of Santa Clara Mission. The grant was between the Santa Clara Mission and the Pueblo of San José, south of the present day San Jose International Airport.
History James Alexander Forbes (1805–1881), born in Scotland, came to Yerba Buena in 1831. He moved to the Santa Clara Valley, where married Maria Ana Galindo, whose father, José Crisóstomo Galindo, was the majordomo of the Santa Clara Mission. James Alexander Forbes:The Mischief-Making Renaissance Man Forbes was granted the one square league Rancho Potrero de Santa Clara in 1844. Forbes sold the Rancho to Commodore Robert F. Stockton in 1847.Paul W. Gates, 2002, Land and Law in California: Essays on Land Policies, Purdue University Press,
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 Potrero de Santa Clara was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852,United States. District Court (California : Northern District) Land Case 77 NDFinding Aid to the Documents Pertaining to the Adjudication of Private Land Claims in California, circa 1852-1892 and the grant was patented to Robert F. Stockton in 1861. Report of the Surveyor General 1844 - 1886 A second claim was filed by José M. Fuentes, but was rejected due to lack of evidence.United States. District Court (California : Northern District) Land Case 209 ND
In the 1862 Stockton sold the rancho to Charles B. Polhemus and Henry Newhall, who planned to run railroad tracks through the valley.
Landmark status
On September 15, 1981, the State Historic Preservation Office designated the first successful introduction of the Honey bee to California as a California historical landmark #945. A description on the commemorative plaque reads: "Here, on the 1,939-acre Rancho Potrero de Santa Clara, Christopher A. Shelton in early March 1853 introduced the honeybee to California. In Aspinwall, Panama, Shelton purchased 12 beehives from a New Yorker and transported them by rail, 'bongo,' pack mule, and steamship to San Francisco. Only enough bees survived to fill one hive, but these quickly propagated, laying the foundation for California's modern bee-keeping industry."
See also List of ranchos of California
References
External links Rancho de Sta. Clara á el Norte y cononir el posito at The Bancroft Library