[1] He is also the namesake of Amador Valley (home to the cities of Pleasanton and Dublin), a component of the Tri-Valley in Alameda County.

He was born at the Presidio of San Francisco, one of the youngest of eleven children of Pedro Amador and Ramona Noriega.

He spent his early years as a soldier and explorer, serving in the Spanish army of Nueva España, 1810–1827, then from 1827 to 1835 was mayordomo, or administrator, at the Mission San José.

In 1877, he was living at Whiskey Hill, Santa Cruz County when Thomas Savage recorded Amador's “Memorias sobre la Historia de California,” which survives as a manuscript in the Bancroft Library.

With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican–American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored.