Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito

Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito was a 8,418-acre (34.07 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Santa Clara County, California given in 1841 by Governor Juan Alvarado to José Peña.

[2][3] José Peña (1777–1852), an artilleryman at the Presidio of San Francisco, received permission from the Mission Santa Clara in 1822 to occupy a square league of its pasture land.

When Peña died in 1852, his widow Gertrudis Lorenzana (d.1865) remained owner of the adobe and its property, which an 1862 map shows near Lake Lagunita [1].

In 1824, Secundino Robles had discovered cinnabar deposits south of San Jose, when Ohlone Indians showed him where they retrieved their red-pigmented rock.

[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.