| Official Name: | Rancho Thompson |
| Other Name: | Eight Leagues on Stanislaus River |
| Settlement Type: | Mexican land grant |
| Mapsize: | 250x200px |
| Pushpin Map: | USA |
| Pushpin Map Caption: | Location in the United States |
| Pushpin Relief: | 1 |
| Coordinates: | 37.8°N -120.89°W |
| Elevation M: | 43 |
| Elevation Ft: | 86 |
Rancho Thompson (also called "Eight Leagues on Stanislaus River") was a 35533acres Mexican land grant in present-day San Joaquin County and Stanislaus County, California given in 1846 by Governor Pío Pico to Alpheus Basil Thompson.[1] The rectangular grant was 2league along both sides of the Stanislaus River by 4league – mostly north of the river. The grant encompassed present-day Riverbank and Oakdale.[2]
Captain Alpheus Basil Thompson (1795 - 1869)[3] was a seagoing merchant from Brunswick, Maine who settled in Santa Barbara in 1834.[4] Thompson owned the ships Loriot and the Bolívar Liberator, trading between the China and California.[5] Thompson married Francisca Carrillo, daughter of Carlos Antonio Carrillo, Governor of Alta California from 1837 to 1838. Thomson and his shipping partner and brother-in-law, John Coffin Jones, Jr. (1796 - 1861), entered into a partnership to manage their Santa Rosa Island, California land grant. A legal battle between Thompson and Jones began in 1856, and the acrimonious Thompson-Jones partnership ended in 1859.
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Thompson was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852,[6] [7] and the grant was patented to Alpheus Basil Thompson in 1858.[8]
Thompson sold an undivided seven-tenths to Gabriel B. Post of G. B. Post & Co., San Francisco, and the remaining three-tenths to the law firm of Halleck, Peachy & Billings. Post & Co. went bankrupt, and Halleck, Peachy & Billings now owned the entire grant. The grant was sold off in small pieces from 1858 to 1862.