Rancho Guajome Adobe Field Trip

The adobe was built in 1852 and served as the headquarters of Rancho Guajome, a Mexican land grant. Abel Stearns had given the rancho to Ysidora Bandini (sister of his wife Arcadia Bandini), as a wedding gift when she married Lieutenant Cave Johnson Couts in 1851.
It is a large rambling twenty-room Spanish Colonial style hacienda with two courtyards, an arcaded veranda, and other structures including a chapel in a former small house.^[3][4] It was built with the profits from the cattle boom of the 1850s, when many California ranchos supplied the Gold Rush miners and associated new American immigrants with meat and leather.^[3]
Couts was appointed sub-agent for the native Luiseño people (San Luis Rey Mission Indians) in 1853, and used their enslaved labor to improve his properties in the area, including this one and nearby Rancho Buena Vista and Rancho Vallecitos de San Marcos.^[5][6]

Landmark

The structures were was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970.^[2][4] It is also a California Historical Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

wikipedia.com