Rancho Valle de San Felipe
Rancho Valle de San Felipe was a 9,972-acre (40.36 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day San Diego County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to Felipe Castillo. The grant was located in the San Felipe Valley in the Laguna Mountains east of present-day Julian.
The three square league Rancho Valle de San Felipe was granted to Felipe Castillo in 1846. On his death in 1848, Castillo left the land to his four children (brothers, Loreto, Manuel, and Refugio, and sister Elena).
The heirs sold the rancho to John Forster in 1850. John Forster (1815–1882), born in England, came to California in 1833. In 1837, he married Ysidora Pico, sister of Pío and Andrés Pico. John Forster was the grantee of Rancho de la Nación and later owner of the Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores.
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 Valle de San Felipe was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to John Forster in 1866.
Forster sold Rancho Valle de San Felipe to François Louis Alfred Pioche (1818–1872), a San Francisco financier. In 1890 (40 years after the sale to Forster), Castillo's daughter unsuccessfully claimed one fourth of the grant.
The lands of the rancho near what is now Scissors Crossing, was used by travelers as a rest stop on the Southern Emigrant Trail to recover from the crossing of the Colorado Desert. From 1857 as a water and rest stop by the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line.
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