Rancho Valdez

Rancho Valdez is a census-designated place (CDP) in San Raimundo County, California. The population was 2,764 as of the 2000 census. It is located on a broad mesa between an interstate freeway and the US-Mexican border. Primarily a bedroom community, the largest employers include the Zenith-Valdez School District, the Valdez Canyon Water District, and Gellman Health Partners.

HISTORY

The area now known as Rancho Valdez was originally inhabited by semi-nomadic bands of indigenous Americans who estabished seasonal villages as they moved between upland and coastal areas.

During the Mexican colonial era, 14,650 acres comprising much of modern Rancho Valdez and the surrounding canyons were given as a land grant and worked primarily as a cattle and horse ranch. The name of the modern town descends from this time.

Some 3,000 acres of this was purchased by Orpheus Clampton in 1883 and organized as the Valdez Canyon Agricultural District. A lawsuit between the District and the heirs of the Valdez land grant hinged on a clause in the sale contract which had not been translated properly into Spanish in the copy of the deed of sale signed by the Valdez family. A judge in Zenith decided in favor of the Valdez Canyon Agricultural District, adding another 10,000 acres to the company's holdings and leaving the rancho with only the land surrounding the main hacienda.

Cattle ranching, primarily for meat, dominated the local economy until the construction of freeway between San Raimundo and Berrendo in 1954, when a gravel quarry in the canyon between Rancho Valdez and Zenith became the largest employer. The quarry would continue to provide the backbone of the local economy until its closure in 1996.

Construction dominated the next phase of Rancho Valdez, as bedroom communities pushed farther east from San Raimundo. Easy water availability at the Valdez Canyon Reservoir and flat land for building on the mesa allowed for thousands of new homes, mostly constructed between 1998 and 2007. 

DEMOGRAPHICS

Population (1990 census): 431

Population (2000 census): 2,764 (+641%)

Population (2008 estimate): 4,278 (+155%)