Category: Cotati, California

In 1827, John Reed, the first Anglo settler, in northern Sonoma County arrived. John Reed did not farm since the Kota’ti Native Americans engaged in annual field burnings. In 1844, the native Kota’ti had “disappeared” when a Mexican land grant called, “Lomas de Kotate” had been established.

This property passed through a number of hands, including those of Thomas O. Larkin, the first and only U.S. Consul to California. He arranged for its purchase in 1849 by Dr. Thomas Stokes Page, a friend and expatriate American physician then practicing in Valparaiso, Chile.

After numerous years of legal wrangling over Spanish, Mexican, Californian, and United States land law, Page’s agents established livestock and built a large Victorian home for the large Page family. Dr. Page’s wife, Anna Maria Liljevalch Page, and their minor and young adult children emigrated from Chile in 1869. Dr. Page died in 1872, leaving his émigré sons to run the sprawling dairy and stock farm. Described in an 1875 newspaper article as the largest farm in Sonoma County and one of the finest pieces of agricultural land in California, the property became known as “Rancho Cotate.”