By the 1860s, most land along California’s central coast was privately owned, but large inland territories remained unclaimed, and a few cowboys and stockmen moved cattle and sheep onto the hills bordering the Estrella River in the San Juan Valley. For the next 20 years, William Seid’s ranch, Cox & Clark’s Sacramento Ranch, and Phillip Biddle’s California Ranch stood as remote outposts, with San Luis Obispo the only sizeable population for miles. After President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, citizens and immigrants could claim 160 acres of free government land if they lived on it for five years, built a 12-by-4 dwelling, and planted crops. In the 1880s, pioneer families began homesteading, buying, or leasing land for farming and livestock near the junction of San Juan Creek and Cholame Creek, where they built houses, barns, a post office, general store, school house, and blacksmith shop and formed the small community of Starkey Flats. In 1890, real estate promoter Chauncey Hatch Phillips and his West Coast Land Company surveyed and laid out the town site of Shandon, which rivaled and soon eclipsed Starkey Flats, and some buildings were moved there by wagon teams. Tradition held that the town’s name came from the story “Shandon Bells,” published in May 1882 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.