Section III: SAN ISIDRO RANCH COMPANY PAPERS

Contains the records of the San Isidro Ranch Company, which was located in Lower California east of Tijuana. The company was organized in 1911 as the Mexican Land and Colonization Company; the next year the name was changed. The property was made up of a group of ranches (San Isidro Ajolojol, El Moro, Poza del Encino, El Carrizo, El Refugio, and Jesús María) which by 1914 contained 37,000 acres that had been purchased for hunting and for future agricultural development. In 1914, during the Mexican Revolution, Esteban Cantú, military governor of Lower California, took over the lands for a remount station. From 1917 to 1919 the National Government began colonization there, but after the Revolution was over, ordered the colonists removed and the land returned. The San Isidro Ranch Company filed claims with the American Mexican Claims Commission and litigation followed until settlement was finally made with the stockholders. The collection contains the chain of land titles (the earliest being 1827 with an original diseño map), letters re the operation of the ranch, and correspondence about the company's claims against the Mexican government.