Rancho Laguna de los Palos Colorados
Rancho Laguna de Los Palos Colorados was a 13,316-acre (53.89 km2) Mexican land grant in the Berkeley Hills within present-day Contra Costa County, California.
It was given in 1841 by Governor Juan Alvarado to Joaquín Moraga and his cousin, Juan Bernal. The name means "Ranch of the Lake of the Redwoods" in Spanish.
The rancho included the present-day Orinda, Lafayette and Moraga, as well as the communities Canyon and Rheem.
In 1835, Joaquín Moraga (1792–1855) and his cousin, Juan Bernal (1802–1847), successfully petitioned and were granted their request for Rancho Laguna de Los Palos Colorados. Joaquín Moraga was the grandson of José Joaquín Moraga, who was a Spanish soldier on the Anza Expedition. Juan Bernal was the grandson of Juan Francisco Bernal, also a Spanish soldier on the Anza Expedition.
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 Laguna de los Palos Colorados was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1853, and the grant was patented to Joaquín Moraga in 1878.
Juan Bernal died in 1847, and Joaquín Moraga died in 1855. By 1859, through a series of complex and often questionable transactions, most of the Rancho Laguna de los Palos Colorados had been acquired by lawyer Horace Carpentier. Carpentier sold the land in 1889 to two railroad men, Angus A. Grant (1843–1901) and James A. Williamson (1829–1902). They formed the Moraga Land Association and planned to build a railroad and to subdivide the property into town sites and small ranches, but the plan never materialized and Carpentier foreclosed on the property.
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