page_title: El Sur Ranch
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: El Sur Ranch / History
caption_attribution_description: English: John Baptist Henry Cooper (1831 - 1899) was the son of John Bautista Rogers Cooper, one of the original recipients of several land grants from Mexican Governor José Figueroa.
context_page_description: The El Sur Ranch, located on the Big Sur coast of California, has been continuously operated as a cattle ranch since 1834. The approximately 7,100 acres ranch straddles Highway 1 for 6 miles from the mouth of the Little Sur River to the mouth of the Big Sur River and Andrew Molera State Park. Both the ranch and the park originally comprised the Rancho El Sur land grant given in 1834 by Governor José Figueroa to Juan Bautista Alvarado. It has been owned by the Hill family since 1955, who operate a commercial cow-calf operation.
  Upon inheriting the ranch while still in college and pressed by increasingly high property taxes, the ranch's current owner James Hill began plans to develop two percent of the property. His plans were protested by Big Sur residents whose efforts persuaded the California Coastal Commission to deny his permit. In 1997, after being denied a permit to build a 200-room hotel at the mouth of Little Sur River, he agreed to a conservation easement covering almost all of the property visible from Highway 1 at a cost of $11 million to California taxpayers.
context_section_description: Before the arrival of Europeans, the land was occupied by the Esselen people, who resided along the upper Carmel and Arroyo Seco Rivers, and along the Big Sur coast from near present-day Hurricane Point to the vicinity of Vicente Creek in the south. The native people were heavily affected by contact with Europeans, who established three Spanish Missions near them from 1770 to 1791. The Spanish forcibly assimilated the Indians, requiring them to labor in the mission fields, while feeding them an inadequate and foreign diet.
  The native population was further decimated by diseases for which they had no immunity, including influenza, measles, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and dysentery, which wiped out 90 percent of their people,. Most of the Esselen people's villages within the current Los Padres National Forest were uninhabited by around 1820.
  Spanish Governor José Figueroa granted two square leagues (totaling 8,949 acres (36.22 km²)) of land named Rancho El Sur in 1834 to Juan Bautista Alvarado, who later traded it to his uncle Juan Bautista Rogerio Cooper in exchange for Rancho Bolsa del Potrero. As required by the Land Act of 1851, Cooper filed a claim for Rancho El Sur with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and after year of litigation he received the legal land patent in 1866.
  John B.R. Cooper married Geronima de la Encarnacion Vallejo. They had six daughters and one son.  Their son John Baptist Henry Cooper helped his father with the cattle business on Rancho El Sur. He also successfully managed other lands owned by the family in the Salinas Valley. His sister Frances Molera inherited the southern half of Rancho El Sur.
  John married Martha Brawley in 1871 and was elected as a Monterey County supervisor. Upon John B.R. Cooper's death in 1872, his portion of the  ranch was divided between his widow, their son John Baptist Henry Cooper, and their two surviving daughters, Anna Maria de Guadalupe Cooper and Francisca Guadalupe Amelia Cooper.
  John Baptist Henry Cooper built a new home on Rancho El Sur Ranch but died soon after its completion on June 21, 1899, leaving the ranch to his wife. Martha (Brawley) Cooper received 2,591 acres (1,049 ha) of her husband's estate totaling 7,000 acres (2,800 ha), and over time bought the remainder from her husband's two sisters. She sold 5000 acres in 1928 to businessman Harry C. Hunt of Carmel-by-the-Sea.
caption: John Baptist Henry Cooper (1831 - 1899) inherited a portion of Rancho El Sur from his father, John Bautista Rogers Cooper. This later became the El Sur Ranch.
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