rode off again to continue the hunt, leaving Revere to observe the great 

 quantity of elk killed on Point Reyes. 'We passed many places, on our way 

 back, where mouldering horns and bones attested to the wholesale slaughter 

 which had been made in previous years by the rancheros of the neighborhood." 

 The beleaguered elk already were dwindling in numbers, and according to an 

 account related by Rafael Garcia, the surviving herds swam across Tomales Bay 

 to the wilderness of Sonoma County sometime in the late 1850's or early 1860's. 



Revere also offered comments on the state of the Point Reyes rancho in 

 1846. The hunting party camped for the night at "what was called the rancho, 

 but in arriving we found nothing but a broken down corral [this is apparently 

 Osio's headquarters at the later site of C. W. Howard's F Ranch on Drakes 

 Estero]." En route to the rancho they passed "a herd of cattle so little civilized 

 that the very antelopes were grazing amongst them." Point Reyes, then at the 

 dawn of American control, had reverted to its wild and natural state, awaiting 

 the arrival of the dairymen who would make the peninsula famous. 25 



3. Rancho Nicasio 



Rancho Nicasio, at 56,807 acres the largest of the Marin land grants, was 

 given to Pablo de la Guerra and Juan Cooper in 1844, ending a sad chapter in 

 California history when the remaining Coast Miwok were brazenly swindled out 

 of 80,000 acres that had been promised them by Mariano Vallejo, military 

 commander of the northern frontier. De la Guerra and Cooper hired surveyor 

 Jasper O'Farrell to divide the grant into five sections which, by 1851, had been 

 sold. Cooper sold Section 4, of 8,695.27 acres on which stand three of the 

 ranches subject of this report, to Benjamin Buckelew on October 25, 1850, for 

 $10,000. 26 



25 Bancroft, History 4: 664; Robinson, Land in California, pp. 63, 204; Munro-Fraser, Marin 

 County, p. 151; Senate, Jones Report. 31st Cong., 1st sess., 1851; Becker, "Point Reyes," p. 43. 



26 Munro-Fraser, Marin County, p. 283; Mason, Early Marin. pp. 59-67. See Mason for the 

 entire story of the Nicasio land case. 



17 



