Histories of Latino/a and Latinx Medicine in California

Rancho and Town

An 1858 survey map of Rancho Rincon de la Puente del Monte.  Courtesy the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

During California’s Mexican period Teodoro Gonzalez was alcalde (administrator) of the city of Monterey. In 1836 the Mexican Governor of California gave Gonzalez a tract of land called the Rancho Rincon de la Puente del Monte - more than 15,000 acres in the Salinas Valley, located south of San Francisco Bay.

Map showing the location of the town of Gonzales in relation to Stanford University and Monterey. Map data courtesy the County of Santa Clara, California State Parks, ESRI, TomTom, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, the Bureau of Lane Management, EPA, NPS, and USFWS.

Ten years later, the US declared war on Mexico. With the US victory in 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United States. Teodoro Gonzalez remained in California and retained ownership of his ranch. 

When Leland Stanford (later the co-founder with his wife Jane of Stanford University) and his business partners at the Central Pacific Railroad began to build railroads throughout California, the Gonzalez family granted the Central Pacific the right to run railroad tracks across their ranch. In the early 1870s Teodoro’s sons Mariano and Alfredo laid out a 50-block town that extended from the new railroad depot on the Rancho Rincon de la Puente del Monte. The town they created was called Gonzales - a variant spelling of their family name. 

Leland Stanford (1824-1893) was one of the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad). He and his wife Jane Stanford founded Stanford University in 1885.  Courtesy the Stanford University Archives.

1919 photograph of Wong Fook, Lee Chao, and Ging Cui - three of the many thousands of Chinese workers who built the Central Pacific Railroad. Courtesy the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.