Rancho Monte del Diablo (Devil's Mount Ranch in Spanish) was a

Mexican land grant In Alta California (now known as California) and Baja California, ranchos were concessions and land grants made by the Spanish and Mexican governments from 1775 to 1846. The Spanish concessions of land were made to retired soldiers as an indu ...

in present-day

Contra Costa County, California Contra Costa County (; ''Contra Costa'', Spanish for 'Opposite Coast') is a county located in the U.S. state of California, in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 1,165,927. Th ...

given in 1834 by Governor

José Figueroa José María Figueroa (1792 – 29 September 1835) was a Californio politician and military leader. He was a General and the Mexican Governor of Alta California from 1833 to 1835. His ''Manifesto'' (1835) was the first book published in Calif ...

Salvio Pacheco Don Juan Salvio Pacheco II (1793–1876) was a Californio politician, ranchero and soldier. He founded the city of Concord, then known as Todos Santos. Pacheco also served three terms as Alcalde of San José (mayor of San Jose). Biography Pache ...

. The name "Monte del Diablo" means "thicket of the devil" in Spanish. The name was later incorrectly translated as Mount Diablo. The grant covered the area from the Walnut Creek channel east to the hills, and generally from the

Mount Diablo Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton, California, Clayton and northeast of Danville, Califo ...

foothills north along Lime Ridge to Avon on the

Carquinez Strait The Carquinez Strait (; Spanish: ''Estrecho de Carquinez'') is a narrow tidal strait located in the Bay Area of Northern California, United States. It is part of the tidal estuary of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin rivers as they drain int ...

of the

Sacramento River The Sacramento River () is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for before reaching the Sacramento–San Joaquin River D ...

, and included present day

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other words Arts and media * ''Concord'' (video game), a defunct 2024 first-person sh ...

and parts of Pleasant Hill. Pacheco and Clayton are outside of the Rancho Monte del Diablo grant.

History

Juan Salvio Pacheco II (1793–1876) was the grandson of Juan Salvio Pacheco (1729–1777) and Maria Carmen del Valle, who came to California with the

Anza Expedition Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (July 6 or 7, 1736 – December 19, 1788) was a Novohispanic/Mexican expeditionary leader, military officer, and politician primarily in California and New Mexico under the Spanish Empire. He is credited as on ...

in 1776. Salvio Pacheco II, son of Ygnacio Bernardino Pacheco, was born in San Jose and enlisted in the military, serving at the

Presidio of Monterey The Presidio of Monterey (POM), located in Monterey, California, is an active US Army installation with historic ties to the Spanish colonial era. Currently, it is the home of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI-FLC). ...

and the

Presidio of San Francisco The Presidio of San Francisco (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco or The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, and is part ...

. In 1827, Pacheco was serving as a senior civil servant at the

Pueblo of San José San Jose, California, is the third largest city in the state, and the largest of all cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California, with a population of 1,021,795. Site chosen by Anza For thousands of years before the arrival of ...

. When Pacheo received the grant in 1834, his son, Fernando Pacheco, was sent to occupy the grant and begin cattle operations. Salvio Pacheco did not move the rest of his family to the rancho until 1846. With the

cession The act of cession is the assignment of property to another entity. In international law it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty. Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines cession as "a surrender; a giving up; a relinquishment of jurisdicti ...

of California to the United States following the

Mexican-American War Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican descent. In 2022, Mexican Americans comprised 11.2% of the US population and 58.9% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United State ...

, the 1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). It was signed on 2 February 1848 in the town of Villa de Guadalupe, Mexico City, Guadalupe Hidalgo. After the defeat of its army and the fall of the cap ...

provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Monte del Diablo was filed with the

Public Land Commission The California Land Act of 1851 (), enacted following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the admission of California as a state in 1850, established the California State Lands Commission to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican l ...

in 1852, and the grant was

patented A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

to Salvio Pacheco in 1859. Salvio Pacheco married Maria Juana Flores in 1817 and had a family of five children – Fernando Pacheco, Maria Dolores Manuela Galindo, Sarah Amador, Salvador Pacheco, and Maria Concepcion Soto.

Pacheco, California Pacheco is a census-designated place (CDP) in Contra Costa County, California. The population was 4,183 at the 2020 census. It is bounded by Martinez to the north and west, Concord to the east, and Pleasant Hill to the south. History The t ...

was named for Salvio Pacheco.

Historic sites of the Rancho

Don Salvio Pacheco Adobe The Salvio Pacheco Adobe is a historic adobe house in Concord, California. It was built in 1835 by Salvio Pacheco, a Californio ranchero with vast lands in Contra Costa. History In 1834, Salvio Pacheco was awarded the Rancho Monte del Diablo ...

. Two-story adobe built in 1846. *Fernando Pacheco Adobe. The site of the adobe house constructed in 1843 by Fernando Pacheco (and reconstructed in 1941). Fernando Pacheco Adobe (Landmark 455)
/ref> *

Don Francisco Galindo House The Don Francisco Galindo House, known locally as the Galindo House and Gardens, is a 19th-century house in Concord, California built in 1856 by Francisco Galindo and his wife, Maria Dolores Manuela (Pacheco) Galindo, daughter of Salvio Pacheco ...

. The Galindo house was built in 1856 for Francisco Galindo and his wife, Maria Dolores Manuela Pacheco. Galindo moved to the Rancho Monte del Diablo and he purchased over from Salvio.

References

{{Contra Costa County, California Monte del Diablo Mount Diablo Concord, California Diablo Range

Monte Monte may refer to: Places Argentina * Argentine Monte, an ecoregion * Monte Desert * Monte Partido, a ''partido'' in Buenos Aires Province Italy * Monte Bregagno * Monte Cassino * Montecorvino (disambiguation) * Montefalcione Portugal * M ...