Throughout the Spanish and Mexican periods which extended from 1769, up to 1846, Spanish and Mexican Land Grants boasted large cattle herds numbering into the hundreds of thousands. Simultaneously with the magnificent ranchos was the Franciscan Missions cattle industry. When the missions were secularize in 1834 millions of cattle roamed the vast grass lands of California. A sizable ranch I would say. Cattle was the number one economic commodity in the golden state.
Cattle ranches, too many to number, flourished in California.
The Tejon Ranch, founded in 1843 is still in operation to this day. The Miller and Lux Brand founded in 1853, became the largest cattle ranch on record in North America. California is also celebrated as the state that revolutionized the cowboys life for comfort and practicability in working cattle all over the world when a man by the name of Juan Martarel maintained a saddle repair shop in a little hamlet in the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley called Hornitas. All stock saddles were derived from those brought over by Cortez in 1519, but the first improvements were made in the little town of Hornitas, California, in 1868, over three hundred years later. Richard Mattley, one of the workmen in the shop, and a native of Mexico disliked the construction of the saddle, rebuilt the tree, and so pleased the owner that other riders began to beg for the same improvements.