Rancho Pismo was a 8,839-acre (35.77 km2) Mexican land grant in present day San Luis Obispo County, California, given in 1840 by acting governor Manuel Jimeno Casarin to José Ortega (probably a descendant or other relative of José Francisco Ortega).
He arrived in Los Angeles in 1832, and by 1848, had established a large otter trapping and merchant business in Santa Barbara.
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.
He sold the southern half (now Grover Beach and Arroyo Grande) to Francis Ziba Branch.
[11] In 1860 he built a small wharf on the adjacent Rancho San Miguelito, which is now called Mallagh’s Landing.