San Benito County History

The history of San Benito County - Sections excerpted from A Memorial and Biographical History of the Coast Counties of Central California by Henry D. Barrows and Luther A. Ingersoll, and published by The Lewis Publishing Company in 1893.

New Idria Preservation Project - Discusses the history of New Idria and the New Idria Quicksilver Mine located in southern San Benito County.

History of Bear Valley School - The original Bear Valley School was built of redwood in the fall of 1873 and received its first students in January of 1874, with P. Troy as teacher. The school was built on the ranch of Dr. Americus W. Powers, the region's first physician, and the doctor eventually deeded the school and its surrounding acreage to the Bear Valley School District for the sum of $1.

San Juan Bautista - The Old Mission San Juan Bautista has had an unbroken succession of pastors since its founding on June 24, 1797.

San Juan Bautista History - Courtesy of: San Juan Bautista Historic Park.

The Breen Family - New Light on the Donner Party - Patrick Breen is famous for the diary he kept from November 20, 1846, to March 1, 1847, the only record we have of daily events at the mountain camps. After arriving at the lake, the Breens moved into a cabin constructed two winters previously by members of the Townsend-Stephens-Murphy Party.

A Brief History of the Pajaro Property Protective Society - Phil Reader - Vigilantism in the Pajaro Valley During 19th Century

The 1906 Earthquake - San Benito County - Pictorial works - Five photographs from the Bancroft Libarary of earthquake damage in San Benito County.

San Benito County Courthouse - Completed 1888, the San Benito's third courthouse was a lavishly decorated building with an exterior modeled on the Farnese Palace in Rome and elaborate balustrades of polished red cedar within.

The Sanchez File - The Probate Proceedings on the drowning of José Maria Sánchez at the Pájaro River, Christmas Eve, 1852 and the Conspiracy in Monterey County to plunder the estate of his widow Encarnación Ortega.

Pinnacles National Monument - Anthropologists believe Pinnacles was intermittently occupied by small groups of Native Americans. Evidence in the form of arrowheads and acorn grinding stones have been discovered within the monument.

Pleistocene Lake San Benito - By Olaf P. Jenkins - During a search for commercial deposits of sand and gravel along the stream courses of the Pajaro-San Benito River basin, extensive silt deposits, obviously left by late Pleistocene lakes, were discovered. They form well-defined siltbed terraces quite different from the stream terraces of sand and gravel. Drilling into the stream channels also revealed lake beds interstratified with the stream deposits.

The Life and Career of Tiburcio Vasquez, the California Bandit and Murderer. (1875) by Eugene T. Sawyer - Tiburcio Vásquez was the last of the famous banditos to terrorize California and his death marked the end of a turbulent and often violent era that occurred after California's independence from Mexico.

Early Days at the Mission San Juan Bautista (1929) - Isaac L. Mylar (b. 1847) and his family came overland to California in 1852. For three years his father prospected for gold at Shaw's Flat before settling in the town around the old mission of San Juan Bautista in San Benito County. Early days at the mission San Juan Bautista (1929) begins with the history of the mission and memories of Mylar's boyhood and schooling in the town and his growing acquanitance with the mission church and the priests and brothers who administered it. He recalls life in the town in the 1850s when San Juan helped supply the nearby mines, and in later decades: political and business leaders, schools and churches, streets and houses, bandits and other criminals, hunting, hotels and stage lines.

The Story of a Mine (1877) by Bret Harte - This is a fictionalized story about the discovery, development and litigation of the New Idria Quicksilver Mine in southern San Benito County.