La Vereda del Monte (Spanish for "The Mountain Trail") was a backcountry route through remote regions of the Diablo Range, one of the California Coast Ranges. La Vereda del Monte was the upper part of La Vereda Caballo, (The Horse Trail), used by mesteñeros from the early 1840's to drive Alta California horses to Sonora for sale.
From its northern beginning at Point of Timber on the Sacramento River Delta near modern-day Brentwood, the trail traveled south to the Livermore Valley. It passed nearby east of Alisal (now part of Pleasanton, California) up into the mountains on Crane Ridge, then continued south through the San Antonio Valley onto the rugged backcountry divide of the Diablo Range, traversing what is now Henry Coe State Park and crossing Pacheco Pass. It continued southward to a mountain ranch on Cantua Creek where mustangs and stolen horses were gathered by Joaquin Murrieta's horse gang before they drove them down the rest of La Vereda Caballo to Sonora for sale.
At Poso de Chane east of present-day Coalinga, La Vereda del Monte linked to other roads and trails of La Vereda Caballo such as El Camino Viejo, or another across the valley to the east to the Kern River and Kern Lake, then through Old Tejon Pass, south through Southern California across Antelope Valley and east along the north side of the San Gabriel Mountains before crossing to a spot near Rancho Cucamonga. From there the drove went by various routes, depending available water, to cross the Colorado Desert and the Colorado River, then across the Sonoran Desert on the Camino del Diablo to Caborca and south into Sonora where the horses were sold.
La Vereda del Monte was notably used by Joaquin Murrieta and other mesteñeros as a route for driving mustangs and stolen horses from Contra Costa County and the upper Central Valley southward toward Mexico, unobserved by authorities. Murrieta was reportedly killed by California Rangers at Arroyo de Cantua, his gathering place on the trail where he and his gang held and organized their horse herd for the drive to Sonora.
Video La Vereda del Monte
References
- Frank F. Latta, JOAQUIN MURRIETA AND HIS HORSE GANGS, Bear State Books, Santa Cruz, California. 1980. xv,685 pages. Illustrated with numerous photos. Index. Photographic front endpapers. Latta devoted chapter eight of this work to the Vereda del Monte.
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