Puesto

Puesto, as a place, post, or small town, makes it all clear to me. That
would be why it is used interchangeably.
I can imagine these enormous haciendas having their own outpost, like the
trading posts of the Old West with supplies and such and where families of
the hacienda workers lived, even having their own little chapel. That could
eventually become a town and the scattered places on the hacienda, where
clusters of families lived, could become ranchos when the hacienda was
divided up over time. Well, I don't know how it really was, but I imagine
this could be so.
Well, thank-you, for the help.

Corrine Ardoin
Santa Maria, California