Editing Pacheco, California (section)

==History==
[[File:Salvio_Pacheco.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Pacheco is named after [[Salvio Pacheco]], a [[Californio]] ranchero who owned [[Rancho Monte del Diablo]].]]
The town was laid out in 1857 by Dr.&nbsp;J.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;Carothers and named for [[Salvio Pacheco]], grantee of the [[Rancho Monte del Diablo]] Mexican land grant.<ref name=CGN /> A post office operated at Pacheco from 1859 to 1913 and from 1955 to the present.<ref name=CGN />

Pacheco was briefly a prosperous commercial center. During this period, Pacheco Slough was deep enough to receive ocean-based shipping.  From 1851 to nearly 1873, Pacheco was the county’s commercial center: the shipping port for the grain grown in the Ygnacio, San Ramon and Tassajara valleys, with warehouses, a flour mill and shops along the creek. Walnut Creek, (then known as Pacheco Creek), then flowed deep and free into [[Suisun Bay]]. For over 20 years, Pacheco was a major shipping port for central Contra Costa County.<ref name=Mero>[http://www.cocohistory.org/essays-megaflood.html Megaflood & Megadrought - How They Changed Contra Costa By William E. Mero] from cocohistory.org accessed September 6, 2018</ref>

The destruction of Pacheco’s Walnut Creek shipping channel occurred gradually over many years and for many reasons.  Man-made ecologic damage eventually combined with a series of fires and floods, as well as an earthquake, destroyed the town and filled the Slough with silt during the 1860s, to ruin Pacheco's growing prosperity just as similar ones had done to the great classic ports of [[Ephesus]] and [[Troy]].<ref name=Mero/> Pacheco was subsequently depopulated by the attraction of the nearby town of Todos Santos, later to be known as [[Concord, California|Concord]].<ref>{{cite book |title = Old Times in Contra Costa |last = Tatam |first = Robert Daras |publisher = Highland Publishers |location = Pittsburg, Calif. |isbn = 0-9637954-3-0 |year = 1996 |pages = 114–115 }}</ref>