For many centuries before the Spanish arrived in the late 1700s, this valley in Santa Barbara County was part of a region with a large Chumash Indian population, and valleys like this often held Chumash villages. In the early 1800s, friars from Mission Santa Ines placed crosses on some unmarked Indian graves, giving the area the name Las Cruces, or The Crosses. Around 1833, Miguel Cordero, a retired soldier from the Presidio of Santa Barbara, built an adobe home here, and his Mexican land grant of more than 8,000 acres included a vineyard, orchard, wheat and barley fields, and a cattle ranch. Beginning in 1861, Las Cruces became a convenient stop on the stagecoach route from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. In 1881, the Hollister family and the Dibblee brothers bought the Cordero rancho, and after local stagecoach lines ended in 1920, the adobe was used as a roadside cafe and gas station. The present adobe nearby was probably built around 1860, and by the 1930s it was in ruins; Frank Fourly, known as Rattlesnake Pete, had lived there as a boy until about 1894. A bridge across Gaviota Creek served travelers passing through Gaviota Pass in the 1800s, and during that period a barn east of the adobe was built for changing stagecoach horse teams. In 1967, California acquired the land as part of Gaviota State Park, where these historic remains are preserved.