Englishman Robert Livermore jumped ship in Southern California in 1822,
yet just 15 years later became the respected owner of the 40,000-acre
Las Positas land grant. Here he built his new Californio wife an adobe
house in 1839. The wealth that flowed into California during the gold
rush allowed Livermore to import a two-story house around the Horn, but
entrepreneurs and squatters flowed in as well. Nathaniel Patterson
opened the first hotel in the old Livermore adobe, frequented by miners
on their way from the South Bay to the Sierra gold mines. Laddsville, a
village built where the roads to Stockton and Dublin met, was also a
going concern until the Central Pacific pushed over the Altamont Pass.
On this line grew the town founded by William Mendenhall in 1869, named
for pioneer Livermore, who had died more than a decade earlier. Soon
Livermore became the valley's commercial center for hay, wheat, barley,
wine grapes, and ranching.