Rancho Las Mariposas

Alvarado never complied with the usual requirements for a grant due to the Miwok Indians being hostile to the invasion of their longstanding homelands.

[4] After playing his part in the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846, John C. Frémont, soldier, explorer, and (later) presidential candidate, decided to settle down in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Despite clear instructions, for some reason, Larkin purchased Rancho Las Mariposas in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills from Juan B. Alvarado.

When the boundaries were surveyed, the grant included Mariposa, Bear Valley, and the Pine Tree and Josephine mine complex.

He and his wife Jessie Benton Frémont made their home in Bear Valley until 1859, when they bought a house in San Francisco.

[7] 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.

Merced Mining Co. maintained that the official survey had been made in a clandestine manner and that Frémont had no title to the minerals, as his grant was for grazing and agricultural purposes only.

Lengthy litigations in the face of hostile public sentiment piled up court costs and lawyer fees.

By 1865, the Mariposa Company was bankrupt, Olmsted returned to New York, and the land and mines were sold at a sheriff's sale.