The Rancho Santa Maria de los Peñasquitos was the first Mexican land grant in present-day San Diego County. Ruiz built an adobe home on the rancho, which was north of the Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá, and nearby the Kumeyaay settlement of Awil Nyawa. Ruiz built the first ranch house on the rancho in 1824, which was later expanded upon.[2]
In 1837 Ruiz sold his ranch to Francisco María Alvarado - a grandnephew. After Ruiz died in 1839, Alvarado moved to the ranch, and lived in the adobe home built by Ruiz. Alvarado married Tomasa Pico (1801 - 1876), and they gave the property to their daughter Maria Estéfana Alvarado (1840 - 1926) when she married Captain George Alonzo Johnson (1823 - 1903) in 1859.[3][4]
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 Peñasquitos was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852,[5][6] Capt. Johnson inherited the ranch by the time the U.S. government granted a patent to the land in 1876.[7]
Capt. Johnson sold the rancho in 1880 to Colonel Jacob Shell Taylor, founder of Del Mar. Charles F. Mohnike owned the ranch in 1910. In 1921 George Sawday and Oliver Sexon bought the ranch and stocked it with cattle. Real estate developer Irvin J. Kahn bought Rancho Peñasquitos in 1962.[9]
^San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line Stations and Mileage between them, derived from the newspaper article by a traveler to the Gadsden Purchase printed in the Sacramento Daily Union, 11 January 1858, p.4, A TRIP TO THE GADSDEN PURCHASE