The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Fort in 1848 brought rapid change to California as thousands of immigrants arrived, the non-native population rose from 20,000 to 100,000 in a year, Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848, and California became the 31st state in 1850. As large numbers of settlers put Mexican land titles at risk, members of the Argüello family had to defend their vast Rancho de las Pulgas in court, where attorney Simon Mezes successfully defended their claim and received nearly 7,000 acres in payment, including much of what is now Redwood City. The Gold Rush building boom also created heavy demand for lumber, leading to more than two dozen sawmills in the Santa Cruz Mountains that supplied redwood and Douglas fir, much of it carried to Redwood Creek and shipped by barge on San Francisco Bay. About a mile southwest of Mezesville stood Sweeny Ranch, first owned by Myles Sweeny in the late 1800s; an Irish immigrant who made his fortune in San Francisco as a liquor importer and distributor and later became president of Hibernia Bank, he used the Redwood City land for hay growing and cattle grazing while living in San Francisco. After his death, his daughters sold the ranch. By the end of the century Redwood City had become a small town of about 1,600 residents, and by the opening of Stanford Redwood City in 2019 the city had grown to nearly 90,000. The small town along the creek that Mezes named for himself became known as Redwood City.