Rancho El Sobrante

[3] Victor Castro built a two-story adobe dwelling in what is now El Cerrito, and became one of the first members of the Board of Supervisors of Contra Costa County in 1852.

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.

By 1893, a survey map shows Victor Castro (Juan Jose had died) as the owner of just 549 acres (2.2 km2).

Thousands of acres had gone to pay attorneys' fees in long struggles in the courts, against both more or less legitimate claimants and plagues of squatters who tried to profit from the Castros' troubles.

More lawsuits were filed until 1909, when the final partition decree settled legal ownership of the land within Rancho El Sobrante.