La Vereda del Monte

rdf:langString La Vereda del Monte

rdf:langString La Vereda del Monte (Spanish for "The Mountain Trail") was a backcountry route through remote regions of the Diablo Range, one of the California Coast Ranges. La Vereda del Monte was the upper part of , (Spanish for "The Horse Trail"), used by mesteñeros from the early 1840s to drive Alta California horses to Sonora for sale. From its northern beginning at Point of Timber on the Sacramento River Delta near modern-day Brentwood, the trail traveled south to the Livermore Valley. It passed nearby east of Alisal (now part of Pleasanton, California) up into the mountains on Crane Ridge, then continued south through the San Antonio Valley onto the rugged backcountry divide of the Diablo Range, traversing what is now Henry Coe State Park and crossing Pacheco Pass. It continued southward to a mountain ranch on Cantua Creek where mustangs and stolen horses were gathered by Joaquin Murrieta's horse gang before they drove them down the rest of La Vereda Caballo to Sonora for sale. At Poso de Chane east of present-day Coalinga, La Vereda del Monte linked to other roads and trails of La Vereda Caballo such as El Camino Viejo, or another across the valley to the east to the Kern River and Kern Lake, then through Old Tejon Pass, south through Southern California across Antelope Valley and east along the foot of north side of the San Gabriel Mountains before crossing to a spot near Rancho Cucamonga. From there the drove went by various routes, depending on available water, to cross the Colorado Desert into Baja California and the crossings of the Colorado River into what was then Sonora (before the Gadsden Purchase), then across the Sonoran Desert on the Camino del Diablo to Caborca and south into Sonora where the horses were sold. La Vereda del Monte was used by mesteñeros and horse thieves most notably by Joaquin Murrieta's Five Joaquins Gang as a route for driving mustangs and stolen horses from Contra Costa County and the upper Central Valley southward toward Mexico, unobserved by authorities. Murrieta was reportedly killed by California Rangers at the Arroyo de Cantua, after they had found and followed the Vereda to his gathering place there on the trail where he and his gang held and organized their horse herd for the drive to Sonora.