Rancho San Mateo
Rancho San Mateo was a 6,439-acre (26.06 km2) Mexican land grant on the San Francisco Peninsula, in present day San Mateo County, California.
It was given in 1846 by Governor Pio Pico to Cayetano Arenas.
Rancho San Mateo extended from the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains to San Francisco Bay. It included Coyote Point, about one-half the present city of San Mateo, all of Burlingame and most of Hillsborough.
Pio Pico, the last governor of California under Mexican rule, made the grant to his secretary, Cayetano Arenas of the Pueblo de Los Ángeles, for his family’s service to the government. Cayetano Arenas father was Luis Arenas.
Arenas sold the property in 1846 to Yerba Buena (Pueblo de San Francisco) merchant and American immigrant William Davis Merry Howard. Howard with his wife, Agnes, retired from the city to live on the rancho in 1854, and built a residence named "El Cerrito" and developed a successful working ranch.
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 San Mateo was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to William Davis Merry Howard in 1857. A claim by José de la Cruz Sánchez was rejected.
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