Rancho Buena Ventura
Rancho Buena Ventura (also called "San Buena Ventura") was a 26,632-acre (107.78 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Shasta County, California, given in 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Major Pierson B. Reading (1816–1868). The land grant is named for the former name of the adjacent Sacramento River, Buena Ventura, which meant good fortune in Spanish. The grant extended some nineteen miles on the west side of the Sacramento River, from Cottonwood Creek on the south to Salt Creek on the north, and extended approximately three miles west of the Sacramento River the length of the grant. The grant encompassed present day towns of Anderson, Cottonwood and Redding. This was the northernmost land grant in California. Redding, however, was not named for Major Reading; it was named for B. B. Redding, a land agent for the Central Pacific Railroad.
Governor Micheltorena and John Sutter, his alcalde granted Rancho Buena Ventura to Pierson B. Reading (listed as Pearson B. Reading in the land case documents) in 1844. Reading, who was at that time working for John Sutter at Sutter's Fort in Sacramento as a clerk and trapper, visited the land grant but did not move onto it. He stocked the land with cattle and built a house for his overseer but it was burned down by natives in 1846. Reading was active in promoting the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. After serving as an artillery lieutenant then as paymaster at the rank of major in a battalion led by John C. Frémont, he built a permanent adobe dwelling and settled on his grant in 1847. He became the second (after Lansford Hastings) permanent settler of what was to become Shasta County.
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