Rancho Guajome was a 2,219-acre (8.98 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day San Diego County, California, given in 1845 by Governor Pío Pico to Indian brothers Andrés and José Manuel.

[4] The grant was south of the San Luis Rey River and Rancho Monserate and north of present-day Vista.

Stearns held onto the land for a few years before giving it to his sister-in-law, Ysidora Bandini, as a wedding gift when she married Lieutenant Cave Johnson Couts in 1851.

[7][8] 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.

[11] By the time the Couts family settled on Rancho Guajome in 1853, Cave was prospering by supplying beef and leather to the Bay Area during the gold rush era.