The young Don Juan Murrieta saw vast open spaces set in the midst of an expansive valley. Greened by the grasses that covered the area, the valley was dotted with oak trees, and sycamores lined the creeks. Such natural beauty, he thought, and such a practical choice. So, he bought 52,000 acres.

Don Juan was only 18 when he arrived in California from Spain in 1863, settling with two brothers in the San Joaquin Valley where they took up sheep ranching.

When Don Juan came looking here seven years later, he found an area that had changed little since it was first seen in 1797 by a party of Spaniards searching for a mission site. The perfect location, he found, for the 100,000 sheep he herded south from Merced to the new ranch he bought in 1873.

The sheep did well, feeding on the valley's rich grasses, and the natural hot springs found in the area proved a cleansing sheep dip.

The sheep are long gone, and Don Juan eventually sold his holdings and moved to

Los Angeles, where he worked 30 years in the sheriff's office.

When Don Juan died in 1936 at the age of 91, the valley that came to bear his name, Murrieta had already experienced its first boom and its first bust.

The railroad came, and a town was built up around it. By 1890, some 800 people populated the area. In 1935, trains stopped running this route and the boom went bust.

Not much was to change until 1987, when a period of explosive growth began. Sleepy little Murrieta, totaling only 542 residents in 1970 and little more than 2,250 a decade later, grew up almost overnight.

When it became a city officially on July 1, 1991, it was home to some 29,000 folks, many of them drawn to the area by the same virtues young Don Juan Murrieta found so attractive more than 100 years earlier. Today, the population of Murrieta exceeds 65,000 with natural beauty and so practical a choice, a real "gem of the valley."

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