Rancho San Juan Capistrano del Camote, translated as (Saint John Capistrano Of the sweet potato), Camote is probably an error in the documents, Camote would be Camate, which referred to the stream that ran through the grant and that in the 19th century was called the Camate according to Walter Murray [1858], or Comatti according to Annie L. Morrison [1917], now called Camatta Creek. The Rancho was a 44,284 acre Mexican land grant in the San Juan Valley, 13.7 miles southeast of Shandon, California in present-day San Luis Obispo County, California. History Rancho San Juan Capistrano del Camote The "ten square leagues" of the rancho was granted July 11, 1846, by Governor Pio Pico to Tomás Herrera and Geronimo Quintana, both originally from Nuevo Mexico. Unlike most ranchos in Alta California Rancho San Juan Capistrano raised sheep, commonly raised in Nuevo Mexico. Alta California was dependent on the trade of woolen goods from Nuevo Mexico for horses and mules over the Old Spanish Trail until immigration from Nuevo Mexico brought herds of sheep beginning in the 1840s that began to change that. During the Mexican–American War, Tomás Herrera and José María Quintana raised a company of 30 New Mexican and Mexican cavalry that fought against the American forces at the November 16, 1846 Battle of Natividad. In 1847, the new owners had built two houses near the center of the tract, also planting wheat, barley and some fruit trees. At one time, they had 400 head of cattle on the rancho. After Alta California was annexed to the United States and became the state of California, the grantees filed a claim with the Land Commission on August 14, 1852. That claim was rejected by the Commission December 26, 1854. Their title was declared invalid, because it was dated July 11, 1846, four days after the conquest of Monterey by the American Forces. Rancho San Juan Capistrano Murders, May 12, 1858 In May 1858, two French Basques, Bartolomé Baratie and M. Jose Borel, had come from Oakland to raise sheep on the rancho. On May 12, shortly after they settled in the ranch house on San Juan Creek, it was the subject of an infamous attack by eight of the bandit gang of Jack Powers and Pio Linares that resulted in the robbery and murders of the two men and the kidnapping of Andrea Baratie, the English/Chilean wife of Bartolomé. The