. Fulgencio Higuera (1799–1878), was the son of Jose Loreto Higuera (1778–1845), grantee of
Rancho Los Tularcitos, and grandson of Ygnacio Anastacio Higuera, who came to California with the
De Anza Expedition. His brother Valentin Higuera was the grantee of
Rancho Pescadero. In 1820, Fulgencio Higuera married Maria Clara Saturnina Pacheco. In 1836 Fulgencio Higuera was granted the two square league Rancho Agua Caliente, formerly Mission San José land. In 1845, Higuera married Maria Celia Feliz. With the
cession of California to the United States following the
Mexican–American War, the 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Agua Caliente was filed with the
Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was
patented to Fulgencio Higuera in 1858. Higuera gradually sold off his holdings in the 1850s. An attorney, Abram Harris, purchased the southern portion of this land in 1858 and established what briefly became known as Harrisburg. In 1850, Clement Columbet bought , and developed a resort and one of the state’s first wineries. However, the resort did not survive the
1868 Hayward earthquake.
Leland Stanford bought the property in 1869 and founded
Leland Stanford Winery at the corner of Stanford Ave and Vinyard Ave, in what is now Fremont. Thomas W. Millard, who had come from New York to California in 1853, bought a large portion of the Rancho in 1855. ==Historic sites of the Rancho==