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The Legends Archaeological discoveries suggest that the Monterey Peninsula's earliest aboriginal villages stood along the shoreline of the Del Monte Forest. Artifacts found there date back some 5,300 years and are believed to be from predecessors the Rumsen tribe, who were The Preserve's earliest residents, settling here about 1,500 years ago. Fact and fiction compete in the saga of Catalina Manzaneli Munrás, who developed her original Rancho San Francisquito grant into a classic Old California ranch and farm. Cattle baron Bradley Sargent, a progressive politician, was dogged by rumors of private ruthlessness as he assembled this original Rancho with surrounding ownerships to the horizons into his Rancho San Carlos. Those boundaries remain his enduring legacy to The Preserve. Rumor swirled around entrepreneur George Gordon Moore, a polo-playing social lion whose lavish spending and pursuit of Britain's most celebrated actress during World War One fueled international gossip. One scholar suggests, Moore may have inspired the portrait of the tragic hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece "The Great Gatsby." |
 "Historically, the owners of this land have been extraordinary people living extraordinary lives. Neither that nor the land has changed."
Mark Miller, Historian
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