The Romance of the Ranchos

Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica

Most of the development on the ranchos of Southern California has just happened—they, like Topsy, just grew. But not so the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica. A careful plan, expenditure of great wealth and a determination of purpose unequaled all sought to make a great seaport of Santa Monica—and no city could have grown more contrary to the efforts to guide it than has Santa Monica.

The rancho was granted December 20th, 1839, by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to Francisco Sepulveda, officer of the Mexican army, and comprised 31,000 acres of mountain, mesa and ocean shore land. In the following thirty-three years many changes came over California. The rule of the United States supplanted the ruin of Mexico, California became a state and Los Angeles a city. The wool of the lazy sheep became more profitable than the hides of cattle.

In 1872 the heirs of Sepulveda, anxious to divide their inheritance and believing that Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica had reached the peak of its value, sold the same for less than $2.00 an acre to Colonel Robert S. Baker, prominent wool grower of Kern County. Colonel Baker stocked the rancho with herds of sheep and shortly thereafter sold an undivided three-fourths interest in his property to Senator John P. Jones of Nevada. Jones and Baker then conceived the plan of a great harbor at Santa Monica and a harbor city on the rancho; the fortunes of both these men were thrown into the project and Santa Monica was platted.

The Los Angeles & Independence Railroad with its terminus at the new city and running to Los Angeles was built and operated. It had been planned to extend the railroad into the mining district of Inyo County and part of its name was derived from Independence, the county seat of Inyo County. However, the line was never built beyond Los Angeles. In connection with the railroad a large warehouse was built in Los Angeles, and a long wharf at Santa Monica. Every preparation was made for giant ships of the sea—ships which were never to come.

In 1886 the land boom which descended on Los Angeles and vicinity found Santa Monica well prepared to receive it. Colonel Baker and Senator Jones had hundreds of unsold lots and those previously sold when the harbor city was budding were ready for resale. The Arcadia Hotel, a handsome tourist resort located on the bluff, was built by Colonel Baker and named for his wife, Arcadia Bandini de Baker, who formerly had been Mrs. Abel Stearns. Mrs. de Baker, child of an illustrious Spanish family, was famed for her beauty, and, as wife of Don Abel Stearns, commanded an outstanding social position in Los Angeles. Upon Don Abel’s death she inherited all of his ranchos. Shortly after the boom the Estate of Colonel Baker, Senator Jones and the Santa Monica Land & Water Company conveyed 300 acres of land along the east boundary of the rancho to the United States and on this and adjoining land the Soldiers’ Home was built.

Then another effort was made to create a harbor at Santa Monica—this time led by Collis P. Huntington with the wealth of the Southern Pacific Railroad behind him. This last great attempt was given up only when threshed out on the floor of the United States Senate and the United States had decided that the Harbor should be at San Pedro. Perhaps it was the guiding hand of destiny that kept Santa Monica unspoiled as a residence city.

Rancho Los Palos Verdes

Rancho Los Palos Verdes has been the scene of some of the earliest as well as the latest development in Los Angeles County. For more than thirty years before Willmore platted Willmore City, later called Long Beach, and before Jones and Baker laid out their harbor city of Santa Monica there had been a thriving settlement at the port of San Pedro in the Rancho Los Palos Verdes.

The town of San Pedro, later city of San Pedro, and now part of the city of Los Angeles, was built around that port settlement and almost the entire district was carved not out of the Rancho San Pedro, as is generally understood, but out of the Rancho Los Palos Verdes.

The rancho was granted June 3rd, 1846, by Governor Pio Pico to Jose Loreto Sepulveda and Juan Sepulveda, brothers, this grant being a ratification of a previous one made in 1827. It extended from Redondo to Wilmington and bounded on the north and northeast by Rancho San Pedro and on the southeast, south and west by the Pacific Ocean, comprising 31,629 acres. Pico, however, reserved a plat of land along the beach, 500 varas square, for the use of the “Superior Government of the Mexican Nation.”

With the death of the original grantees and the passing of the ranch title to their many heirs, Rancho Los Palos Verdes passed into a period of extensive litigation and had it not been of such tremendous size and of such constantly increasing value in all probability it would soon have belonged to the attorneys. From 1865 to 1880, seventy-eight lawsuits were instituted involving the rancho. The ranch title itself was not confirmed until 1880. All of the heirs and their successors in interest held undivided parts of the rancho and six partition suits were filed before the property was divided according to the respective ownerships. There were also a dozen suits to eject squatters, several divorces among the owners, three condemnation suits by the United States government for land for the lighthouse at Point Firmin, an action to fix the boundaries of Timms Landing at the port, two foreclosure actions and several complaints for possession.

The commissioners in one of the partition suits platted the town of San Pedro, composed of ninety-eight blocks and this plat filled the two-fold purpose of making an easy method of dividing the property among the partitioners and of providing for the growth of the settlement at the harbor.

In the years that followed the east part of the rancho progressed rapidly while thousands of acres in the hills from Point Firmin to Redondo were retained in a few ownerships and the land used only for farming. Few people ever saw the rugged coast of Palos Verdes, although Malaga Cove, Rocky Point, Point Vicente, Long Point, Portuguese Point and Portuguese Bend were all known to fishermen.

In 1913 for a consideration of nearly $2,000,000 the western part of the rancho was conveyed to Jay Lawler and Frank A. Vanderlip, then of New York. Palos Verdes Estates was conceived in 1922 to develop this part of the property and to make a world-famous community of homes. The rancho of the Sepulvedas is a perfect setting for this effort.

Mission San Gabriel Arcangel

In all California no land has been the scene of such triumphs and defeats, such prosperity and poverty, such alternating fair fortune and dire misfortune as the lands of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel.

The Mission San Gabriel was founded September 4th, 1771, by Father Junipero Serra and land set apart for the Mission included nearly the entire San Gabriel Valley. There was the usual struggle to establish the Mission and convert the Indians. The first Mission buildings were destroyed and the old mill—yet standing—built at a great expenditure of toil and thought was a total failure. But within a few short years after the founding Mission San Gabriel took its place as the Queen of the Missions and the most prosperous of all.

The title of the Mission Fathers to the lands had not been confirmed by written grant from Carlos III, King of Spain, and the governors of California under Mexico took advantage of this to grant ranchos within the valley borders. In the northwest part Rancho San Pascual was granted to become the princely estate of Don Manuel Garfias and later the sites of Pasadena and South Pasadena. Farther east Rancho Santa Anita was created and eventually became the property of E. J. (Lucky) Baldwin. Beyond that rancho were Ranchos San Francisquito and La Puente. Along the south hills of the valley Ranchos La Merced, Potrero Grande and Potrero Chico were granted. By the severing of such large tracts of land the property of the Mission San Gabriel diminished from tens of thousands of acres to thousands of acres and then to hundreds.

In 1846 Governor Pico asked permission of his government to lease the remaining land of the Mission San Gabriel “to prevent the total ruin of the Mission.” No lessee could be found to take the land under this act and on June 18th, 1846, Pio Pico made the final grant of all the remaining Mission lands to Julian Workman and Hugo Reid. The United States government, however, refused to confirm this last minute disposal of the Mission land and declared the property public land of the United States, first setting aside to Bishop Alemany 190 acres surrounding the Mission buildings.

The public land was quickly taken up by many settlers, who were eager to acquire homesteads in a country almost exclusively made up of giant ranchos. Subsequently B. D. Wilson and J. De Barth Shorb acquired much of this land and platted the present prosperous and beautiful city of Alhambra. San Gabriel and Monterey Park also have been built on land originally within the Mission boundaries.

The 190 acres set aside for the Mission Church was the largest parcel of land received by any one Mission out of the land it had formerly held. At the height of the Mission glory in all a million and a half acres were under the control of the Padres. When California became the property of the United States twenty missions other than San Gabriel held from four to seventy-six acres each—a total for all the chain of less than 800 acres. Eight hundred acres out of the original million and a half.

Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres

Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres was not in South America, as its name might indicate, but was an important rancho of Southern California. The rancho was granted by Manuel Micheltorena, Governor of the Californias, February 24, 1843, to Maximo Alanis and comprised 4,438 acres. Don Alanis died shortly after he received the grant and his heirs conveyed the rancho to Dr. Wilson W. Jones and Wm. T. B. Sanford, the former, one of Los Angeles’ first doctors and the latter, an early Los Angeles postmaster.

But the doctor knew little about ranching and in 1852 he was glad to sell his half interest in the rancho to Don Benito Wilson for $662.75, or at the rate of 35 cents an acre. Don Benito’s interests were extensive and widely separated. Jointly with Dr. Griffin he operated Rancho San Pascual northeast of the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Jointly with Phineas Banning he founded and developed the city of Wilmington at the port of San Pedro, and west of the pueblo, halfway to the ocean, with Sanford, the Postmaster, he raised cattle on Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres. Between supervising trips to his ranchos and to the harbor he found time to maintain a home in the Pueblo of Los Angeles—so large that after he moved it was used for an orphan asylum—buy much city property, ship wine to San Francisco and foster the development of the orange.

In 1858 B. D. Wilson bought the interest of Sanford in this and other property for $16,000 and subsequently sold the rancho. In 1884 John Wolfskill of the prominent family of that name purchased the rancho for $40,000. The purchase by Wolfskill was very timely as the completion of the Santa Fe Railroad two years later sent land prices skyrocketing and in 1887 he entered into an agreement to dispose of the rancho for $438,700, or more than ten times what he had paid for the land in 1884.

The Los Angeles and Santa Monica Land and Water Company was organized to take over the land at that figure. This company built a railroad through the property and platted the town of Sunset. But few lots were sold, however, and in 1891 the Los Angeles and Santa Monica Land and Water Company quitclaimed the land back to Wolfskill and the townsite was restored to acreage. Then for many years the rancho was used only for farming, although its neighbor on the east, the Rancho Rodeo de Las Aguas, was subdivided into Beverly Hills, and on the west Santa Monica grew into a thriving city.

In 1919 Arthur Letts, Sr., Merchant Prince of Los Angeles, founder of the Broadway Department Store, bought the rancho for an investment. Since that time Westwood, Holmby Hills (named after Holmby, England, Mr. Letts’ birthplace) and Westwood Village have all been platted on parts of the rancho. The moving-picture industry has expanded into the property and several of the largest studios are located there. Now the University of California at Los Angeles is being built on the rancho, and already opened as one of the greatest institutions of learning.

B. D. Wilson, John Wolfskill and Arthur Letts all profited by their farsightedness, but none had the vision and none could foresee Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres as it is today.

CONCLUSION

The priceless, romantic history of early California is everywhere being more and more appreciated. It evidences itself in the names of our cities, in our landmarks which are at last being preserved and even in our architecture.

If “The Romance of the Ranchos” can add its bit to perpetuating this glorious chapter in California history the writer will feel the time and effort well worthwhile.

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Transcriber’s Notes

• Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
• Corrected a few palpable typographical errors.
• In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.