Arroyo del Rodeo
Chapter titled "Arroyo del Rodeo". P66. Santa Cruz, The Early Years. Leon rowland. 1980. Paper Vision Press. Santa Cruz, CA. ISBN # 0-934136041.
The Mexican Grant of the Rancho Arroyo del Rodeo, west of the Soquel River, was made the same year as that of Soquel to Martina Castro. Its recipient, Francisco Rodriquez, was her brother-in-law, who, with his wife, Rafaela Castro, had lived there a number of years before Alcalde Bolcoff, in September, 1834, made final thegrant approved by the territorial diputacion.
Rodriquez was a son of Antonio, an invalido of 1799, and one of a large family, many of whose members were given land.
Rancho Arroyo del Rodeo derived its name from thefact that roundups of the the herds of the Rodriquez and Castro families, took place in the natural amphitheater half a mile south of the present Rodeo gulch bridge.
Francisco died in 1848 and from his heirs the big tract was bought by Hames and Daubenbiss. Their title was confirmed by the U.S. land commission in 1855, but a survey in 1861 cut it from 2,353 to 1,473 acres.
John Hames was a thirty-two-year-old native of Osage County, New york, who after interrupting in Peru a round-the-world voyage as ship's carpenter, made his way north to /monterey in 1843. Married by U.S. Consul Thomas Larkin to Drucilla Shadden, an Arkansas girl who had come with her family over the Oregon trail, he had twelve children, most of them born in Soquel.
With his partner, John Daubenbiss, the New Yorker engaged in several sawmill and flour mill ventures, the most notable of which was the four-story flour mill which stood in the sixties and seventies on the lot opposite the present Soquel bank. He was joined by his brother, Ben, whom he had left in South america.
With John Cummings, Soquel merchant, and perhaps other residents of the town, Hames left in 1880 to prospect for gold in Mexico, hoping to retrieve his fallen fortunes. Word that he was ill there was received and his son, Ben, brought him back to Peach Tree, in Monterey County, where he died in 1894.
John Daubenbiss was a Bavarian who, at the age of nineteen, came to America in 1835 and west over the Oregon trail in 1842. From 1843 he was in California, helpingb uild a flour mill for Mariano Vallejo at Mission San Jose. He served under Sutter in the Micheltorena campaign and was naturalized as a Mexican to qualify for a land grant in the Sacramento Valley. In 1845 he signed the San Jose call and in 1846 carried dispatches between Slot and Fremont. He went south with the California Battalion.
Returning to Soquel in 1847 he married Sarah C. Lard and moved to Soquel, which he had first visited in 1843 and when he and Hames hadbuilt the sawmill for Martina Castro in 1845. When Santa Cruz was organized he was named Soquel road commissioner in 1850 and in 1858 was elected supervisor.
Of his ten children all but one were born in Soquel. Until his death in 1896 Daubenbiss was a leading citizen of the county.
Both of the old homes built by Daubenbiss and Hames are still standing (1946).
The name of Doyle gulch, often applied to Rodeo gulch, came from John Doyle who in the sixties and seventies had a farm two miles north of the highway.
INVITED THE CAPITAL
The people of Soquel in 1868 invited the state of California to move its capital there. They offered the use of the hall over Ned Porter's store and promised use of a "city hall" as soon as it could be erected. The "city hall" was built by the flourishing home town band of the day and became known as the "band hall" where Alf Starkie's service station now stands. Later it was moved north on Main Street and became a Methodist church.
p72: In 1880 Cummings, with his clerk, Yates C. Lawson, and John Hames, the pioneer of 1845, left on a gold prospecting trip into Mexico, from which he never returned.
p78: A note of interest is that when, in 1882, the mortgage on the home of John Hames was foreclosed while he was prospecting for gold in Mexico, his wife, the Drucilla Shadden whom he had married in monterey in 1845, found refuge in the old sugar mill, and died there.
Other excerpts and facts from the book:
Benjamin F. Hames, the founder of the town of Corralitos, Santa Cruz County in 1855 or possibly earlier, was the son of Benjamin Hames and Rebecca Harding or Hardin.
The elder Hames resided in Battle Creek, Michigan until his death in1850.
Benjamin left New York in 1823.
Ben's wife, Mary Carmen Laing, buried in Soquel. Died 2/4/1856.
John was mining gold near Mazatlan.
Severe earthquakes in Corralitos in October, 1864.
Benjamin died 8/30/1866 and buried in the little village graveyard (Corralitos).