Assessment List Contra Costa County Sup. Dist. 2 Moraga Lafayette Walnut Creek & Alamo.

Description

This is a highly scarce and perhaps unique tax assessment book of a portion of central Contra Costa County, California, produced in 1893 by the state’s Board of Equalization. It is a remarkable document charting the early growth of towns like Moraga, Lafayette, Walnut Creek, and Alamo.

The book consists of tax assessments of various property holders, akin to census records, noting their personal information, wealth (as measured by various forms of property), and real estate. Some pages contain receipt stubs that were attached to a larger document along a perforated line, which were the forms used for payments when the assessor found that the property owner was delinquent in their tax payments.

The book contains two foldout maps. The first is an 1893 manuscript survey map of the entire county, using color-shading and borderlines to indicate the extent of the former ranchos, including the Rancho Boca de la Cañada del Pinole, Rancho Cañada del Hambre (y Las Bolsas), Rancho Las Juntas, and the Rancho Arroyo de Las Nueces y Bolbones (better known as the Rancho San Miguel). Property lines are traced and owners noted, while several lots are stamped as having been sold to the state.

The second map covers the growing town of Walnut Creek and provides similar information on lot boundaries and property owners. It is dated 1895, and was presumably pasted into the book at a later date. Although the street names in the town center of Walnut Creek have since changed, the grid layout is instantly recognizable, with the creek providing additional help in orientation. Although not entirely clear, a black line running parallel to the creek is likely meant to represent the Southern Pacific Railroad’s San Ramon Valley Branch, running north-south through the county, reached Walnut Creek in 1891. That same year, a depot was built on land donated by Antonio Botelho, a native of the Azores Islands, the bottommost property indicated here. Botelho was a considerable landholder whose property appears on the county map mentioned above, towards top-right, just south of the grid layout indicating the location of Walnut Creek. As a result of the arrival of the railroad, Walnut Creek grew quickly in the following years. The rail line was in use until the late 1970s, and has since been repurposed as a trail for hikers, bikers, and horse riders, the Iron Horse Regional Trail.

Census and Publication Information

This book was prepared by the State Board of Equalization in 1893 and utilized by its tax assessors, who sign the filled out pages. It appears to have been the fourth volume in a series covering the entire county.

Although we have located similar tax assessment books in the holdings of the University of California Berkeley, no example of such records from 1893 are cataloged in institutional holdings. That being said, it is possible that another example is held by the Contra Costa County Historical Society History Center in Martinez, which holds a collection of county records, including tax assessor books, from the 1850s to 1910s.