Rancho Atascadero was a 4,348-acre (17.60 km2)Mexican land grant in present-daySan Luis Obispo County, California.
It was granted in 1842 by GovernorJuan Alvarado toTrifon Garcia.[1] The grant extended along theSalinas River and encompassed present-dayAtascadero.[2][3]
The one square league grant was from the secularized holdings ofMission San Miguel Arcángel. Trifon Garcia was a son of Ynocente Garcia, who was administrator at Mission San Miguel.[4]
With thecession of California to the United States following theMexican-American War, the 1848Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Atascadero was filed with thePublic Land Commission in 1852,[5][6] and the grant waspatented toHenry Haight in 1860.[7]A second claim was filed by Maria Antonia Ortega in 1853, but was rejected by the Commission due to lack of evidence of a grant.[8]
The rancho was sold in 1864 to Martin Murphy Jr. (1807–1884) and his wife Mary Bulger Murphy (d.1892) ofSunnyvale, who had come to California with theStephens-Townsend-Murphy Party in 1844.[9][10] The Murphys turned over running of the rancho to their son Patrick Murphy, who was a General in theCalifornia National Guard.[11][12] Patrick Washington Murphy (1840–1901) operated Rancho Atascadero, and the adjacentRancho Asuncion, andRancho Santa Margarita, altogether comprising about 61,000 acres (247 km2), from his Rancho Santa Margarita headquarters.
In 1912,Edward Gardner Lewis, a successful magazine publisher, bought Rancho Atascadero from J.H. Henry. Lewis founded the utopian, planned community of Atascadero in 1913.[13]
35°29′24″N120°39′00″W / 35.490°N 120.650°W /35.490; -120.650
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