After Spain claimed Alta California following its conquest of Mexico from 1519-1521, reports of British and Russian encroachment in Northern California in the 1760s led Spain to expand colonial settlements to defend the California coast through presidios and missions. The area of today’s Redwood City lay midway between Mission San Francisco de Asís in San Francisco and Mission Santa Clara de Asís at Santa Clara. Don José Dario Argüello received a 69,000-acre land grant in 1795 for military service to the Spanish crown and was appointed governor in 1814. One section of his rancho extended along the coast from Point Año Nuevo to Point San Pedro, and a second 35,420-acre grant, known as Rancho de las Pulgas, was bounded by San Mateo Creek, San Francisquito Creek, San Francisco Bay, and the Coast Range Mountains. Cattle and horses were raised there, and the Argüellos supported the mission by providing Franciscan priests with food, hides, and tallow. The family lived most of the year in San Francisco because travel to Rancho de las Pulgas was difficult and sometimes dangerous in the early Spanish colonial era. After her husband’s death, Argüello’s daughter-in-law Doña Maria Soledad Ortega de Arguello inherited Rancho de las Pulgas and moved to San Carlos. When California became part of the United State in 1848, she was forced to defend her land claims in court and paid her lawyer, Simon Mezes, with a portion of the rancho that later became part of Redwood City, including the Stanford Redwood City site.