| Rancho San Antonio (Peralta Grant) | |
|---|---|
  Location within the East Bay | |
| Location | Northern portion ofAlameda County, California |
| Coordinates | 37°43′50.64″N122°9′41.4″W / 37.7307333°N 122.161500°W /37.7307333; -122.161500 |
| Built | 1820 |
| Designated | 1936 |
| Reference no. | 246[1] |
Rancho San Antonio, also known as thePeralta Grant, was a 44,800-acre (181 km2)land grant by GovernorPablo Vicente de Solá, the lastSpanish governor ofCalifornia, toDonLuís María Peralta, a sergeant in the Spanish Army and later, commissioner of thePueblo of San José, in recognition of his forty years of service. The grant, issued on August 3, 1820, embraced the sites of the cities ofSan Leandro,Oakland,Alameda,Emeryville,Piedmont,Berkeley, andAlbany.[1]
Luís María Peralta never lived on the rancho himself, but his four sons and their families did. With their wives, families, landless Spanish-Mexican laborers (from New Spain), their families, and some native peoples, the Peralta sons established the firstSpanish-speaking communities in the East Bay. As the rancho prospered, the Peralta brothers built newer and bigger houses. The main hacienda contained two adobes, and some twenty guest houses, and became an established stop for travelers along what was during the Spanish era the onlycamino real on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.
The hacienda became the social and commercial center of this vast rancho. Annualrodeos and cattle round-ups,horse racing, and games often took place here. The Peraltas eventually had over 8,000 head ofcattle and 2,000horses grazing on the rancho, and built awharf on the bay near the hacienda headquarters in order to trade therawhide andtallow produced by their cattle. The Peralta family built a total of 16 houses over a fifty-year period on Rancho San Antonio. There were eleven adobes, three frame houses, one brick house, and one built of "logs and dirt" (the very first structure built). SonDomingo's home was located onCodornices Creek adjacent to the site of what is todaySt. Mary's College High School. Son Vicente's home was located in what is today the heart of Oakland'sTemescal district.
In 1842, Luís María Peralta decided to split the rancho among his sons. His five daughters received his cattle and hisSan Jose adobe (thePeralta Adobe) and land. He died in 1851, but not before telling his sons to steer clear of theCalifornia gold rush, stating, "The land is our gold." However, it would not be easy for the Peraltas to hold on to their property.
Although the United States government promised all rights of citizenship and property ownership to theCalifornios through theTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed at the end of theMexican–American War in 1848, theCalifornia Land Act of 1851 required the Californios to prove their land titles in court. The resulting litigation lasted years. In the interim,squatters continued to overrun Rancho San Antonio, stealing and killing cattle and even subdividing and selling land belonging to the Peraltas. Although theUnited States Supreme Court confirmed the Peralta title inUnited States v. Peralta (60 U.S. 343) in 1856, the Peralta family had their own internal title dispute to resolve. Left out of the distribution of the land grant, The Peralta sisters felt cheated out of the family land, and contested their brothers' sole claim to the Rancho San Antonio land grant. The court case, known as the "Sisters Title case" was eventually resolved in the brothers' favor by theCalifornia Supreme Court in 1859.
By 1860, the brothers' land holdings had been substantially reduced, partly to pay for the previous decade's litigation and to cover newly imposed property taxes. Among the lawyers representing them wereHorace Carpentier who acquired large chunks of the Peralta lands as compensation for his services. After the1868 Hayward earthquake destroyed many of the rancho's buildings,Antonio (the third son), built what is now known as the Peralta Hacienda, an Italianate Victorian two-story frame house in 1870, located in what is today theFruitvale district of Oakland.
In 1872, the combined property of the sons of Luís María Peralta was assessed at approximately $200,000 (their father's estate had been valued at $1,383,500 at the time of his death, equivalent to $39 million in 2024). By the time of Antonio Peralta's death in 1879, he only had 23 acres (93,000 m2) left of the original 16,067 acres (65.02 km2) his father gave him.
In the end, the 1870 house and the remnants of Antonio's share of the land grant were sold by his daughter Inez Galindo in 1897 to developer Henry Z. Jones who laid out streets and parcels and moved the 1870 house to its present location. That house and a brick house (thePeralta Home built by the eldest sonIgnacio in 1860) are the only two remaining structures out of the entire complex. The 1870 House now sits inPeralta Hacienda Historical Park in Oakland and is open for tours.[2]
