*** Source: Thompson, Robert A., Historical and descriptive sketch of Sonoma County, California. Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877, 122 pgs. Notice: This data is donated to the Public Domain by TAG, 2004, and may be copied freely by anyone to anywhere. *** ---page 12--- intended they should. The colonists, ever ready for a quarrel, and the Russians, who were making up their minds to leave, gradually contracted their lines toward Ross. They found the Anglo-Saxon, like all the race, stout in the maintenance of the right they had acquired to the soil. Matters grew worse, and finally, in 1839, the Russians made arrangements to abandon the country. In 1840 they disposed of their rights at Ross, including houses, stock, and fix- tures, and embarked from San Francisco for Sitka--in all, men, women and children, about four hundred souls. Some time during his administration, Rotscheff, the last commander at Ross, with a party of Russians, crossed over to the highest peak of the Mayacmas range, which looms up grand and beautiful from the highest hills back of Ross; on the summit on which he fixed a plate inscribed in his own language, and gave the mountain the name it now bears, St. Helena, in honor of his wife the Princess de Gagarin, said to have been a woman of rare attractions, both mental and physical. But the Russians, who for thirty years had been a thorn in the side of the California authorities had departed, and with them all fear from that quarter. The Russians were hardly out of sight before the rulers of the colony found themselves face to face with a more formidable invader than those who had just sailed quietly away. Between 1840 and 1845, a number of Americans had scaled the Sierra, and, with their families, their wagons, teams and cattle, were settling in the valleys of California. Many of these emigrants had started for Oregon, and were turned hitherward from Fort Hall; attracted by the reports which reached them of the salubrity of the climate, and rare fertility of the soil. No dream of gold then in the hills of California. But for the old trappers, many of whom had crossed the mountains, reported it a fair and goodly land. Capt. Stephen Smith next obtained a grant of land at Bodega, which had formerly been framed by Russians. He purchased the buildings on the land from Capt. Sutter, who claimed them under his Russian purchase. In 1846, he arrived at the port of Bodega, bringing with him a steam engine, the first ever seen in California, and with it he run a steam saw mill. When he was ready he sent out invitations to the rancheros and grandees to come and see it start. Among others, Gen. Vallejo, then military commandant of California, was present, and says he remembers having predicted on the occasion that before many years there would be more steam engines then soldiers in California. While the native Californians, the lords of the soil, are enjoying the hospitality of Capt. Smith, and admiring the novelty of the steam engine, we will take the opportunity to tell our readers of what tenure and in what quantity they held in their landed estates. There were twenty-three land grants confirmed to original owners in Sonoma county. The largest was the Petaluma grant, which included all the land be- tween Sonoma creek to the east, the bay of San Pablo on the south, and Petaluma creek on the west. It embraced within its far-reaching boundaries at least seventy-five thousand acres of the finest and most fertile land in the State; every acre of it was arable, and a fence of twelve miles along the north line from Sonoma to Petaluma creek, would have enclosed the whole. This tract of land is now assessed for not less than three million dollars. *** end ***