Rancho Las Positas (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles Rancho Las Positas was a 8,880-acre (35.9 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Alameda County, California given in 1839 by governor Juan Alvarado to Robert Livermore and Jose Noriega. Las Positas means "little watering holes" in Spanish. The rancho included the present day city of Livermore. n 1834 Livermore and his business partner Jose Noriega were keeping livestock at Rancho Las Positas, where they also built an adobe. Livermore and his wife Josefa Higuera Molina, first settled in the Sunol Valley, but later moved to Rancho Las Positas, as Livermore was making regular trips there to manage his rancho. Initially an adobe structure built by Livermore and Amador served as their house on the rancho. 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 Las Positas was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to Livermore and Noriega in 1872.