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Chapter 3: The Mexican Period 1821 - 1848
W
orld events seemed to pass the San
Diego region by in the early 1800s.
The Spanish authorities were pre-
occupied with a growing rebellion in Mexico
and they largely ignored the under-populated
northern outpost, California.
2
In Mexico,
revolutionary troops were fighting against the
Spanish government and eventually won
independence from Spain in 1821.
In the San Diego area, however, the transition
from Spanish to Mexican control
was peaceful.
Daily life and customs changed only gradually.
The soldiers and their families stationed on
Presidio Hill
began to view their little settlement
on the bay as a permanent civilian town. In
1822, they began building homes on the flat
lands west of the hill and that settlement even-
tually came to be known as “Old Town.”
3
After
Mexico
became a republic
in 1824, it opened
California’s ports to
ships from the
United States for the
hide trade. The
principal customers
were shoe manufac-
turers from Boston,
which provided the
only real contact with the U.S. That trade
gave San Diego more revenue than any other
port in California and San Diego eventually
became a center of social and political life.
Still, the U.S. knew virtually nothing about
California. Daniel
Webster, a senator from
Massachusetts, thought the San Francisco
Bay was nice, but reportedly would not pay
a dollar for the rest of
California.
4
Mexico began breaking up mission lands
by distributing large land grants for ranchos
involved in the cattle-grazing operations that
supported the lucrative hide trade. The 8,824-
acre San Dieguito Rancho is now known as
Rancho Santa Fe. The richest grazing ground
of the San Diego Mission became the 48,799-
acre El
Cajon Rancho. Rancho Tia Juana
covered the area from south of San Diego Bay
to the Mexican border. The biggest of them
all, Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores, had
113,440 acres and extended from the coast
of today’s Oceanside north to Orange County
and inland to Fallbrook. As people moved
from the city to the ranchos, the population
of the city of San Diego dropped from 500 in
1834 to only 150 in 1841.
5
THIRSTY RANCHOS
The larger ranchos of the Mexican era began
a trend for intensifying the land use and
“Wherever there was water
there was a ranch, from the
coastal mesas, which are cut
here and there by the inter-
mittent streams of California,
to the broad upland valleys,
which are enriched by
mountain snows.”
Richard R. Pourade
Author of The Silver Dons
1
Lithograph of Rancho Guajome, east of
Oceanside, 1883
The San Diego Historical
Society