El Cajon, CA news and local guide

In the early 19th century, padres of Mission San Diego de Alcala searching for pasture found the El Cajon Valley, whose surrounding foothills kept cattle from straying and gathered the sparse rain, and for years its grasslands fed the herds of the mission and its Native converts. The secularization law of 1834 was meant to divide mission property among the former mission Indians, but most grants went to wealthy Californios. In 1845 Governor Pio Pico confiscated the mission lands and granted 11 square leagues, about 48,800 acres, of the valley to Dona Maria Antonia Estudillo, daughter of San Diego's alcalde Jose Antonio Estudillo, to repay a $500 government debt. Called Rancho Santa Monica, it covered present El Cajon, Bostonia, Santee, Lakeside, Flinn Springs and eastern La Mesa. Her husband, Don Miguel Pedrorena of Madrid, had come from Peru in 1838 to trade.

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After the Mexican-American War, Thomas W. Sutherland, guardian of Pedrorena's heirs, filed a claim for Rancho El Cajon in 1852, and the grant was confirmed by the Supreme Court and patented in 1876. In 1868 the Los Angeles developer Isaac Lankershim bought most of the rancho and made Major Levi Chase, a former Union officer, his agent, and he hired Amaziah Lord Knox, a New Englander, to manage it. In 1876 Knox opened a hotel for travelers between San Diego and the gold town of Julian, charging $1 a night for a guest and horse, and the area became known as Knox's Corners. By 1878 25 families lived in the valley, and part of the hotel lobby served as the post office, with Knox as postmaster. The San Diego, Cuyamaca and Eastern Railway arrived in the 1880s, and El Cajon was incorporated as a city in 1912. Sources Wikipedia: El Cajon, California