Roberto Balemino's land grant was remarkable for its time. As a Native person in the mission system, his path to property ownership ran through a tangle of colonial bureaucracy that rarely resolved in favor of indigenous people. His position at Mission Santa Clara earned him enough standing that Governor Micheltorena granted him 2,219 acres along Los Gatos Creek, near present-day Burbank in the southern reaches of San Jose. The Certificate of Emancipation that accompanied the grant was more than a formality. It made Balemino a full citizen in the eyes of Mexican law, with the legal right to own, sell, and bequeath property. But legal rights and economic reality were different things. By 1847, Balemino had transferred the rancho to Antonio Sunol as payment on a debt. The land that symbolized his freedom became the instrument of its loss.

Antonio Sunol was the kind of figure who appeared repeatedly in early California: a European who reinvented himself on the frontier. Born in Spain in 1796, he arrived at the Pueblo de San Jose in 1818 as a seaman on a French merchant ship and never left. He married Maria Dolores Bernal, connecting himself to one of the valley's prominent Californio families, and held a string of public offices: Postmaster from 1826 to 1829, Alcalde, the equivalent of mayor, in 1841. He was also a grantee of Rancho Valle de San Jose with his three brothers-in-law. The town of Sunol, California still bears his name. When he acquired Rancho Los Coches from Roberto Balemino, he added a modest but useful property to an already diversified portfolio of land and influence.

In 1849, Sunol split Rancho Los Coches three ways. One-third went to his eldest daughter Paula and her husband Pierre Sainsevain, who was himself a grantee of Rancho Canada del Rincon en el Rio San Lorenzo. Another third was sold to Henry Morris Naglee. Sunol kept the remaining portion. The division reflected a common Californio strategy: distributing land among family and allies to consolidate regional influence while generating cash. When California passed to American control after the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised to honor existing land grants. The Land Act of 1851 required proof. A claim for Rancho Los Coches was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to Sunol, Paula Sainsevain, and Naglee in 1857, settling the matter in just five years, fast by the standards of California land litigation.

The most tangible remnant of Rancho Los Coches is the Roberto Adobe and Sunol House, a historic site located within the boundaries of the former grant. The adobe connects two eras: Roberto Balemino's brief tenure as a Native landowner navigating the mission system's aftermath, and the Sunol family's longer stewardship of the property. The building has survived earthquakes, development pressure, and the general indifference that swallowed most of the valley's rancho-era architecture. Today it stands near the banks of Los Gatos Creek, surrounded by the suburban neighborhoods of southern San Jose, a quiet monument to the layered history beneath Silicon Valley's pavement. The pigs are long gone. The walls remain.