Rancho Los Guilicos was a 18,834-acre (76.22 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Sonoma County, California given in 1837 by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to John (Juan) Wilson. The grant extended along Sonoma Creek, south of Santa Rosa from Santa Rosa Creek south to almost Glen Ellen, and encompassed present day Oakmont, Kenwood and Annadel State Park.
Contents
History
The four square league grant was made to Captain John Wilson (1797 – 1861), a Scottish-born sea captain and trader, who came to California in 1830. In 1837 Wilson married María Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco (1812–1888), widow of José Antonio Romualdo Pacheco, who was killed at the Battle of Cahuenga Pass in 1831. Carrillo, was a daughter of Maria Ygnacia Lopez de Carrillo, the grantee of Rancho Cabeza de Santa Rosa. María's sister married General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. María Ramona Carrillo de Pacheco was also the grantee of Rancho Suey. Wilson and his business partner, James Scott (-1851), also owned Rancho El Chorro and Rancho Cañada de los Osos y Pecho y Islay in San Luis Obispo County. In 1845, Wilson moved his family from San Luis Obispo to Rancho Cañada de los Osos & Pacheco y Islay, built an adobe home and lived there until his death in 1860.
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. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Los Guilicos was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to John Wilson in 1886.
Wilson never occupied Rancho Los Guilicos, and in 1849, sold the rancho to merchants William Hood and William Pettit. Scotsman William Hood (1818–) had come to California to join the California Gold Rush. Hood, for whom Hood Mountain is named, quickly bought Pettit's and became the owner of the entire rancho. Unfortunately, Hood could not pay his debts on the land and he sold it in 1893.
In 1849, William Hudson (1813–1866 ) and his brother Martin Hudson (1807–1871), from Virginia, bought 2,500 acres (10 km2) and engaged in raising wheat and stock.
Irishman Captain John Hamilton Drummond (1830–1889), who served in the British army, came to California in 1877, and purchased part of the rancho and engaged in sheep raising and viticulture. In 1890, the Drummond Ranch was purchased by Mary Ellen Pleasant.
U.S. Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah bought the property in 1905 and added other property's to increase the size to 1,800 acres. Kearns entertained his friend President Theodore Roosevelt and used the property as an investment and vacation property until just before his death in 1918. The site of the Los Guilicos Rancho in the "Valley of the Moon" was formerly part of Senator Kearns' ranch and was the setting for part of a Jack London novel Valley of the Moon (1913) wherein his heroine exclaimed, "We have found our Valley!"
Historic sites of the Rancho
William Hood House. House constructed in 1858 by William Hood for his bride, Eliza Shaw of Sonoma.