James and Jane (Dickson) Bell were a Scots-Irish couple who made the overland trek to California in the Gold Rush year of 1849. After owning property in Sacramento, where they were twice flooded and once burnt out, the Bells moved first to San Francisco, and then to this location in rural San Mateo County. There they established a farm, and built and donated a schoolhouse to the county. They also paid and boarded the first teacher in that school, and led the move to established a post office in this then secluded area. The post office was called Bellvale.
The Bellvale Post Office, date unknown.
Their son Frank lived on the family farm, but had bigger ambitions. He and a partner bought the old San Gregorio hotel in the town of that name, just a few miles down the road, and ran it for many years as the Bell Hotel. The structure still stands and is a private residence.
The hamlet of Bellvale, what there was of it, probably stood just south and west of the cache, along a loop of the highway now abandoned in favor of the road cutting just to the West. Curiously, while most of the other Lost Villages in this series seem to have vanished from records, tiny Bellvale still remains in USGS and other databases.
The cache is a pill bottle micro in a very typical hide. It is along a highway which can be very busy on the weekends. Most easily approached from the West, and please pull well off the road in the nearby farm driveway.