BenitoLink is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of San Benito County with a series of articles highlighting aspects of its history. Lea este articulo en español aquí.
San Benito County was founded Feb. 12, 1874, a century and a half ago today, ending its 24 years as part of Monterey County. It was an inevitable chapter in a story that began in 1797 when Spanish missionaries founded Mission San Juan Bautista near an Indigenous village called Popelouchum. And that story is about land.
Native land became Mission land, and the hunters and gatherers who lived on it became a workforce for ranching and farming. Spanish soldiers were given land in the surrounding areas as an enticement to settle what is now California. When Mexico gained control of the region following the 1821 War of Independence, its government expanded this practice.
The Secularization Act, passed in 1833, shifted things into overdrive. Confiscating most of the missions’ property, Mexico sold it or gave it away through grants, which created huge ranchos.
However, when the California territory became part of the United States following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, everything seemed to be up for grabs.
While the treaty bound the United States to respect the grants, in 1851, Congress passed “An Act to Ascertain and Settle Private Land Claims in the State of California,” which required grant owners essentially to prove the property was really theirs—and the process was lengthy and expensive.
Suddenly Mexican farmers and ranchers, who had been struggling against four years of floods and droughts in the early 1860s, found themselves desperate to sell off or subdivide the grants just to survive. Speculators started buying up the land as fast as they could.
One of the jewels in the land grant crown was the 34,620-acre Rancho San Justo, which encircled San Juan Bautista and went east to present-day Hollister and beyond.
Enter Benjamin and Thomas Flint, William Welles Hollister and Lewellyn Bixby.
Rancho San Justo, which belonged to Don Francisco Pérez Pacheco, was purchased by the Flints, Hollister and Bixby in 1855, with Hollister putting up half the money.
The land was used for sheep—around 20,000 of them—which produced wool at a rate of 100,000 pounds a year.
The partnership did not last long. By 1861, Hollister wanted out of the deal. The partners gave him $10,000 and the right to choose the half they wanted.
They divided the land and sheep evenly, and the partners took the land located east of the San Benito River, leaving Hollister with the land to the west. Hollister accepted the deal, then almost immediately asked to swap halves. The partners consented.
In 1868, Hollister moved to Santa Barbara, preparing for an unsuccessful run for governor. He sold his half of the land to the newly founded San Justo Homestead Association, which planned to build a city there.
Initially, it was to be called San Justo until association member Henry Hagen declared that “saints monopolized the name of nearly every place in the state.” Over Hollister’s objection, the city, incorporated in 1872, was named after him.
Hollister quickly grew as a community. Unlike San Juan Bautista, which was still constrained by the land surrounding it, and which the Flints, Bixby and other farmers and ranchers owned, Hollister was free to build in all directions. Hollister was also closer to the mercury mines at New Idria and could better serve as a source of supplies.
San Juan, which just a few years before had wielded significant power in the county, now saw many of its merchants and leading citizens recognizing the potential of the new city and relocating there. Where there once was a movement in the 1860s to make San Juan the seat of Monterey County, now some San Juan and Hollister residents began to wonder why they were still part of that county to begin with.
Part of the reason was economics. Breaking up the land grants helped to create wealth for a lot of people. New Idria in the remote, eastern part of the county was highly productive. Railroad lines and banks were being built. Goods that would have come from Monterey were now being produced in Hollister. And being able to conduct legal business at a county seat in Hollister made a lot more sense than having to ride for a day to get to Monterey.
On Jan. 7, 1874, The Sacramento Daily Union reported that Edward Chaffin Tully, assemblyman for the 20th District, which included Monterey, introduced a bill to divide Monterey County in half to create San Benito County.
Tully had been promoting the idea for a while, following an investigation that suggested seven out of eight Hollister and San Juan residents were in favor of the split. His argument to the Assembly, reported in detail in several local newspapers, was simple.
He pointed out that Monterey County was already too large, about three times the size of Rhode Island. Approximately 4,500 people, about a third of the county’s 15,000 population, lived on the east side of the Gabilan Mountains, a natural dividing line. The eastern half had about $4.5 million in taxable property, thriving businesses and very little debt. The majority of the county, in short, wanted to leave and Tully argued it would manage perfectly fine on its own.
Tully also thought that Hollister and San Juan were not getting their fair share of attention from Monterey. “The people in the new county are already taxed to the extent of some $75,000 to support the old or present county government,” he said, “and they believe they derive no commensurate benefit.”
The opposition to Tully was fierce. The Sacramento Daily Union, on Feb. 3, 1874, reported that a pamphlet had been circulated among assembly members that accused Tully of misstating facts, reporting incorrect population, debt and tax figures, accepting bribes, tampering with his own election, going back on his previous opposition to the division and paying drunks in saloons to sign petitions. There were even aspersions cast at Tully’s “half-white brother-in-law” for influence peddling.
A backroom deal had been cut years before, but not by Tully or his brother-in-law. In the early 1870s, as talk of a possible division grew, 150 town leaders in Salinas pledged their support for San Benito County if residents of Hollister and San Juan would vote to make their city the county seat. The vote was held in 1872, and Salinas got the support it had asked for, becoming the county seat with that election, two years before they were incorporated.
Surviving a few hiccups and parliamentary procedures, the bill sailed through the Assembly and was passed by the Senate on Feb. 12, 1874. It was signed by Gov. Newton Booth the same day.
Hollister was named interim county seat and was a city clearly on the move. The San Jose Mercury News, reporting on the event, said:
“Hollister is a flourishing little village situated in the heart of a rich and beautiful valley and has before it a promising future. It will probably become the new county seat. Many of its best citizens were formerly residents of Monterey County, and better evidence of their enterprise and intelligence could not be produced. Suffice it to say that it is one of the liveliest inland towns in the state.”
Note: Much of the information for this article was sourced from “The History of Monterey County from the Early Days Down to the Present Time (1881),” “The History of San Benito County (1881),” and contemporary newspapers.
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