PANEL OF CONTRIBUTORS: Simon Monserrat Mezes a major player in early Atherton land trades PANEL OF CONTRIBUTORS: Simon Monserrat Mezes a major player in early Atherton land trades (September 10, 2003)

By Nancy Lund

Simon Monserrat Mezes is a name that comes rolling off the tongue with a reminder of the old days when California was young. It's a name little known today, yet in the middle years of the 19th Century, Simon Monserrat Mezes was one of the major players in land deals on the Peninsula.

In fact, one of the early names for Redwood City was Mezesville. He had a surprising role in Atherton's history as well. Although the names Flood and Atherton are still well remembered as town pioneers, Mezes actually owned hundreds of acres more than either of them.

To understand how he acquired his property, it's necessary to know a little about the time when the rancho era faded away as United States law began to supersede Mexican law. In the 1850s, customs and languages were changing rapidly as the new government took over. Rancheros who owned thousands of acres were required to prove to U. S. land commissions that they indeed legally owned their ranchos.

Mezes, a well-connected and shrewd attorney, represented the powerful Arguello family and their enormous Pulgas Rancho. It was his job to protect Arguello property not only from squatters but also before the United States Land Commission.

Mezes had his work cut out for him. The boundaries of the rancho were unclear, as was often the case in the early days when a prized horse or saddle was worth more than many acres of land. There was no question that the Arguello land extended from San Francisquito Creek to San Mateo Creek and from the bay inland. However, the confusion came in identifying the western edge of the property. In the old Mexican documents, that boundary was explained as the eastern edge of the neighboring rancho, Canada de Raymundo, (today's Woodside) and one league (about three miles) from the bay. Those two definitions were different.

If the neighboring Raymundo border was the western edge of the Arguello rancho, their land would extend into the vicinity of Woodside and Searsville. However, by the terms of the one league definition, Arguello land would extend only to the western edge of Atherton and Menlo Park. The discrepancy was some 17,000 acres! As long as the vast ranchos were mostly empty and little used except for grazing cattle, the discrepancy wasn't an issue. But when the Yankees took over and required all Mexican grants to be authenticated by the U. S. Land Commission, the issue of which definition took priority became hotly contested. Those 17,000 acres were at stake, including land purchased in good faith by pioneering lumberman Dennis Martin, who had unknowingly bought property in the disputed territory from John Copinger, the owner of Canada de Raymundo.

The United States courts eventually accepted Mezes' argument that the Mexican government had meant to use landmarks to define the rancho borders rather than any specific measurements. Thus, the further border was judged to be the correct one, and the Las Pulgas grant was confirmed at 35,240 acres rather than 18,240 acres -- a huge victory for the Arguello family.

The result for Dennis Martin was impoverishment and for Simon Mezes, payment for his services in enormous amounts of land, the location of which he could select from the 35,000 acres. Accounts differ somewhat about just how much land he acquired, but it was somewhere around 5000 acres. By selling to sub-dividers, settlers and land speculators, he became very, very wealthy.

Among his choice selections was 1050 acres in Atherton. (Faxon Atherton owned 611 and James Flood 674.) The Mezes land was at the end of Atherton Avenue north of Walsh Road. The subdivision of that land is called Mezes Ranch. Perhaps it's because Mezes chose to make his home on the Belmont portion of his property instead of on the Atherton acres that his surprisingly large holdings in that town are so little known today.

Nancy Lund is the historian of Portola Valley and wrote this article to help commemorate Atherton's 80th anniversary.