Rancho Cañada de Herrera did not last long. Domingo Sais died intestate in 1853. His heirs, his children and his widow Manuella, leased portions of the rancho, and by 1868 had started to sell off portions. The 574-acre portion that now includes Sorich Valley and Sunny Hills Valley was sold in 1869 to the Short Brothers, Jacob and John Orey Baptiste (J.O.B.), who started a dairy called the Short Ranch. They had come across the country in a covered wagon with their mother and younger sisters and at first lived in the ruins of the San Rafael mission. They were prominent early residents of San Rafael.
The Short brothers moved to their prosperous San Anselmo dairy ranch to a house on today’s Durham Road in the early 1880s. When J.O.B. moved back to San Rafael, the 13-room ranch house was leased and was operating as a hotel or resort when it burned to the ground in 1897. Arson was suspected.
In 1898, J.O.B. Short sold 20 acres at the foot of Red Hill to the San Francisco Presbyterian Orphanage which built a large orphanage on the site of the present Parkside Apartments and a working farm on the site of Red Hill Shopping Center and the athletic fields.
Presbyterian Orphanage, 1900
Orphanage (Sunny Hills) Farm
J.O.B.’s surviving children sold the ranch in 1912 to a syndicate of investors, the Short Ranch Company, and part of the ranch was subdivided into lots for homes. In 1924, the Short Ranch Company was dissolved and remaining lots were sold to other developers. Real estate men Thomas Kent and Thomas Minto sold seven acres to the town of San Anselmo where Memorial Park, the American Legion Log Cabin, and Red Hill School (Isabel Cook School) were constructed.
Short Ranch, San Anselmo’s largest subdivision, remained rural for many years. There were several small quarries on the ranch which produced rock used in curbs and rubble walls. Dairy cattle grazed the rolling hills at the dairies of the Spagnoli and Sorich families until after WWII when an influx of new residents spurred the development of more homes.