Rancho Rinconada: The Soto Family Land Grant

The land beneath this corner of the San Francisco Peninsula was once part of a Mexican land grant called Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito, a name meaning something close to the corner bend of the Little Saint Francis Creek. The grant was occupied by Rafael Soto beginning in eighteen thirty-five.

Rafael was the son of Ygnacio Soto, a soldier who had marched with the De Anza expedition of seventeen seventy-six, the overland party that founded San Francisco. The rancho covered two thousand two hundred twenty-nine acres, and the Soto family built a home of redwood timber from the surrounding hills.

These vast ranchos shaped the geography of California for decades. When American settlers arrived after eighteen forty-eight, many land-grant families lost their holdings through legal challenges, debt, and outright fraud. The land that Rafael Soto farmed eventually became what is now part of the Palo Alto area, one of the most valuable real estate markets on Earth.