The Kizh/Gabrieleño People and Misión Vieja

While this blog refers to the specific place name of Misión Vieja or Old Mission as the first European site established in Los Angeles County, there was thousands of years of habitation in the area by the native indigenous peoples.  While these first settlers are often called Gabrieleño (or Gabrieliño), because of their "association" with the Mission San Gabriel, which started at Misión Vieja in 1771 but relocated to the current site within a few years because of flooding from the San Gabriel River, a more recent appellation has been Tongva.  This latter term, however, has no real historical basis, whereas the name Kizh does have a legitimacy in the record and will be used here.

For example, in William McCawley's 1996 book, The First Angelinos, he cites the statement of Raimundo Yorba, who was a consultant to the archaeologist John P. Harrington stated to him that the natives living in the Old Mission area were "what they called a Kichireño, one of a bunch of people that lived at that place just this side of San Gabriel which is known as the Misión Vieja.  Kichireño is not a placename, but a tribename, the name of a kind of people."

While the Kizh/Gabrieleño, like most so-called pre-literate peoples throughout the world, did not have a written language, they, naturally, had an oral one.  This, in turn, meant that there was a vast oral record passed down through the generations among the Kizh/Gabrieleño, having to do with their religious beliefs, history, cultural and social practices, and much else.  The fact that these attributes were not written down do not, in any way, make them subordinate to the written word—it is simply a different way of recording.

This 1925 United States Bureau of Ethnology map (click on it for a larger view in a separate window,) made by the United States Geological Survey, shows "Gabrielino" tribal villages in the broader Los Angeles region.  Note "Hout" in the upper center, corresponding with the term Houtg-na identified by Hugo Reid in 1852 as on "Ranchito de Lugo," probably Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo within the general Misión Vieja area.  While Reid also identified Isanthcag-na as specifically in Misión Vieja, it does not appear on this map, which was provided courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

This makes documenting the history of native peoples anywhere on the planet troublesome for those who need written sources to determine what is valid.  When it comes to the Kizh/Gabrieleño and their thousands of years of residence in the Old Mission area, it has been reported that there were at least two or three villages.  One was noted as Isanthcag-na at "Misión Vieja" by Hugo Reid, a Scotchman who was married to Victoria Comacrabit, a native from the Mission San Gabriel and published 21 letters, the first written analysis, about the "Los Angeles County Indians" in the Los Angeles Star newspaper in 1852.   Notably, while Reid provided names for 28 villages and their 1852 locations, he also observed that "there were a great many more villages . . . probably some forty."

McCawley cited another source who claimed that the name, rendered as 'Iisanchanga, derived from a name for wolf, this being 'isawt, though Harrington considered this linkage "not clear."  McCawley, however, stated that "it is curious that 'Iisanchanga does not appear as a recognizable name in the mission registers" and, therefore, wondered if it "was a small settlement consisting of a few families, or simply a geographical placename."

Bernice Eastman Johnson's 1962 publication for the Southwest Museum, California's Gabrieliño Indians, states, however, that near the first mission site, "perhaps on the rounded hills where oil wells now pump day and night, lay the Gabrielino village of Isantcangna.  Men from this settlement helped the soldiers and the muleteers to raise the first rude structures of poles and 'tules' and gave their attention to the religious observance." 

There are several questionable aspects to this statement, one being that the natives would settle on bare hills rather than in the fertile lowlands closer to water, game and usable plant material. Another is the inference that the Kizh/Gabrieleño were as helpful in work and dutiful in the Spaniards' religious ceremonies as Eastman described.  Her statement, however, that the original 1771 mission structures "were built of materials as flimsy as those from which were formed the huts of neighboring Isantcangna," is notable for two reasons.  First, the demeaning use of "flimsy" (as opposed to, say, "flexible"?) and the suggestion that the Spanish were willing to copy native building materials for their new facility.

Johnson also mischaracterized the later settlement of Old Mission, writing that "years later a little Mexican village of adobe buildings grew up nearby and took the name 'Old Mission,' but this was destroyed in the floods of 1867 and now lies in the rubble behind the new flood-control dam."  This last statement about the 1867 floods is simply untrue:  the Temple adobe of 1851, built just a few hundred yards from the river and which was flooded in 1862, survived into the 20th-century and two years after the 1867 deluge, Rafael Basye built an adobe house adjacent to the Rio Hondo.  Moreover, the Old Mission community existed for decades beyond that flood.

Archaeological investigation, however, as pointed out in early posts on this blog, have not been able, with certainty, to establish this site, primarily because of the total disturbance of the area from flooding, ranching and farming, oil and gas development and the like.  It is thought, though, that a site just to the west of the Rio Hondo, the old course of the San Gabriel River prior to 1867, and north of San Gabriel Boulevard, which is roughly along the old road between the old and new mission sites, is the likeliest spot.

This map from William McCawley's The First Angelinos purports to show Gabrielino villages in the San Gabriel Valley, but does not show any in the vicinity of Old Mission, at the lower center, despite Reid's identification of two, one of which, Houtg-na (or Huunang-na/Hout) appears on the 1925 U.S. Bureau of Ethnology map above. 

McCawley also discussed "the community of Wiichinga [which] was also located in the Whittier Narrows area" and which was said to have been a "ranchería, that is to the east of this Mission on a plain closed by water on all sides."  According to McCawley, "this may have been a small settlement rather than a large community" and reported that there was only one entry in the mission records, from the earliest baptism recorded from Mission San Gabriel in 1771.

The other mentioned village was Huunang-na, although McCawley makes no mention of this site.  Johnson, however, cited Hugo Reid in noting "Houtg-na" as being on the "Ranchito de Lugo," which, stated Johnson, "lay in the vicinity of El Monte."  She linked that name with the term "hukngna" offered by Harrington as meaning willow trees, but then stated that "the Gabrielino word for willow is saxat and a village in the San Bernardino area, Saxangna, was based on that root." 

Confusingly, Johnson went on to say that, "here only the Spanish name El Monte refers to the thickets that bordered the swamps and streams."  She continued with a reference to an "old man who recalled this place [and] seemed to be referring to an incident which had occurred in his father's time," this being a lashing of Indians with willow switches.  On the 1925 map included in this post, there is a placename of "Hout" that appears to conform with the location of the Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and it has been said that the village was located just north of today's Whittier Narrows Nature Center, south of the 60 Freeway and west of today's San Gabriel River.

There is another notable place associated in the general area surrounding Misión Vieja worth noting.  According to an account compiled by Harrington, the oral tradition of the natives cited a place called Xarvo, Xarvat, or Qarvat, where sorcerers were said to engage in witchcraft and the locale is also said to be connected to the oft-cited tale of Chengiichngech, in that this supernatural figure sent avenging creatures, such as bears, vipers and dog-like animals, to punish those people who did not obey his commands.  Another tradition related that shamans in this area called up windstorms to fight their enemies  from the coastal areas and that this occurred "near Punta de la Loma [a hilltop] by old S. G. Mission and Xarvut."

In any case, this site was said to be in "a deep gulch back of Petissier's [Pellissier's] place, opening to the west (near Bartolo Station)" and that "there is a big canyada opening through the hills.  Indians used to live there."  To McCawley, the likely location is Sycamore Canyon at the west end of the Puente Hills in Whittier, now a natural preserve managed by the Puente Hills Landfill Native Habitat Preservation Authority.

Despite what is probably inevitable differences and contradictions in available written sources, some of what appears in print clearly showed that native peoples lived in the Whittier Narrows area when the Spaniards arrived to establish the first Mission San Gabriel there in 1771.  Why Reid would acknowledge two villages in his 1852 work, being much closer to the period of their existence, and McCawley choose not consider them as true villages is curious. 

There are, however, many descendants of the Kizh/Gabrieleño in the area and their oral traditions are there, as well.  This confirms their sense of place in Misión Vieja relating to their presence there for thousands of years regardless of inconsistencies in the written historical record.

Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo and Misión Vieja

The fourth and last of the ranchos that was associated with the Old Mission/Misión Vieja community was Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  This approximately one-half league, or 2,042-acre, ranch was granted by Governor Pío Pico to George (Jorge) Morillo and Teodoro Romero in April 1845.  Potrero de Felipe Lugo was also known as Rancho Dolores, though the origins of that name are not yet known.

The rancho's common name, however, relates to Felipe Lugo, whose father, Antonio María, was grantee of the Rancho San Antonio, a large land grant south and east of the pueblo of Los Angeles.  Felipe was likely allowed to graze some of his cattle from San Antonio in the meadows (which is what potrero means) owned by the Mission San Gabriel and west of the San Gabriel River.

Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo's boundaries run roughly in the following way:  the western boundary of the ranch follows a straight line from south of Santa Anita Avenue as it heads north from Durfee Avenue and then turns northeast very close to the old Lexington-Gallatin Road (an old thoroughfare that ran from today's Pico Rivera, where the townsite of Gallatin was once located, to El Monte, with Lexington being a name for a village in that area) and then just east of Mountain View Road through El Monte until that line hits Valley Boulevard. 

The northern line goes along Valley Boulevard very close to its intersection with Garvey Avenue at the Five Points area of El Monte until just about where Valley meets the 605 Freeway close to Mountain View High School. 

The east line then zigs and zags along the San Gabriel River and cuts within portions of the California Country Club in the City of Industry east of the river and the 605 Freeway.  The boundary then crosses the 605 and river just north of the 60 Freeway, moves over to Durfee Avenue and then moves south across the 60, crosses the San Gabriel River again and turns a corner within the Pico Rivera Bicentennial Park. 

The short southern line of the rancho then turns westward across the river for the last time, moves within the lower or southern section of the Whittier Narrows Nature Center and meets up with the western boundary at Durfee Avenue and Santa Anita Avenue.

As to the grantees, George Morrillo was married to Magdalena Vejar, whose brother Ricardo was, for many years, the owner of the southern or lower portion of Rancho San José, covering modern day Pomona and parts of neighboring areas.  Prior to marring Morrillo, Magdalena was the wife of José Joaquin Verdugo, of the family who received one of the first California land grants back in 1784, including the Glendale and surrounding areas.

A daughter of Magdalena Vejar and José Joaquin Verdugo was Juana María Verdugo and she was first married to Teodoro Romero.  So, when the 1845 grant was made by Governor Pico it was to father-in-law (Morrillo) and son-in-law (Romero.)  By 1850, however, Romero died, so Juana María married Refugio Zuñiga, who came to the marriage with one son and then the couple had several more children.  One of these, Manuel, who was born in 1854, was a long-time fixture in the Old Mission community.

With the conquest of Mexican California by the United States, the striking of a provision protecting Spanish and Mexican land grants from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the ensuing Gold Rush and struggles over land ownership, Congress enacted the land claims process with a March 1851 law that set up a commission and created a court structure to hear and decide land grant claims. 

On 1 November 1852,  a claim was put forward to the land commission in the name of George Morrillo and Juana María Verdugo de Romero.  The commission heard the case within a year and, on 18 October 1853, ruled in favor of the claimants. 

Because the federal government automatically appealed all successful commission decisions, the matter went to the local federal district court in Los Angeles and the case heard on 19 September 1855, where, once again, Morrillo and his step-daughter were successful.

Once again, though, the U. S. government appealed the court case, as was the strategy in all such matters, and the local federal district court heard the matter on 23 February 1857 and dismissed the government's appeal.

This is the first page of the December 1858 map of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo by Los Angeles County Surveyor Henry Hancock, made for the land claim initiated by original grantee George Morrillo and his partner's widow, Maria Verdugo Romero, in 1852 and finally patented in 1871.  It shows the southwestern portion of the ranch and its borders with neighboring ranches La Merced, Potrero Grande, and San Bartolo.  Winding along as the eastern boundary at the right is the San Gabriel River.  The signature at the bottom from 15 June 1871 is by the federal General Land Office commissioner for the issuance of the patent that day.  Click on the image to open a larger version in a separate window.  This copy was provided by the El Monte Historical Society.

While this all seemed well for the Morrillo/Romero family and their ranch, there were enormous financial and personal costs in pursuing these claims.  Lawyer's fees, charges for having required official survey maps drawn, and other expenses could be onerous, especially as the local economy, which boomed in the beef cattle trade with northern mining areas during the Gold Rush earlier in the 1850s, was starting to experience a tightening as the Gold Rush waned.  In addition, there was a major national economic depression that broke out in 1857.

Given all of this, it is not surprising that Juana María Verdugo and her second husband, Refugio Zuñiga, sold their half-interest, or just over 1,000 acres to F. P. F. Temple on 7 January 1857 for $3,000, which was a substantial sum at the time. 

Temple, who came to the Old Mission community in 1851 after receiving half of the neighboring Rancho La Merced from his father-in-law, William Workman, owner of the Rancho La Puente (which bordered Potrero de Felipe Lugo on the east) was busy with Workman and the other owner of La Merced, Workman's former La Puente mayordomo (foreman), Juan Matias Sanchez, in acquiring as much land in the Old Mission ranchos, including Potrero Chico and Potrero Grande, as they could. 
For example, also in 1857, Sanchez took possession of Potrero Grande and gave half of it to Workman and Temple.  Six years later, in 1863, Workman and Temple acquired ownership of much of the tiny Potrero Chico grant.

Notably, though, the Verdugo/Zuñiga deed to Temple included all but one of the 20 lots comprising the ranch, which seems to indicate that the couple reserved lot 8 for themselves as part of the deed. 

Beyond this, Temple moved quickly over the next year to secure quit claims, which would avoid any later attempts to claim portions of the ranch.  For example, on 25 April 1857, a quit claim was filed in Temple's favor by Maria Tifania Romero, a daughter of Juana Maria Verdugo and Teodoro Romero, and her husband Jose Espinosa, as potential heirs of Tifania's mother's half of the rancho.  A couple of weeks later, Walter Shay, who had acquired a 160-acre section from the Verdugo/Zuñiga half of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, filed a quit claim to Temple.  In early 1858, Temple secured another quit claim from Juana Maria Verdugo through her children José and María's potential interest as heirs.

In May 1858, Temple made another purchase, acquiring the interest of Elmore and Louisa Squires in parts of 9 lots that included what was referred to as the "Old Mill."   This was followed up two years later, in April 1860, with the acquisition from Richard and Margaret Chapman of their interest in what was called the "Old Squires/Davis Mill."

What this referred to was a grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops and which was built by Elmore W. Squires and Edward Davis (or Davies.)  Squires (1826-1906) was a native of Kentucky who lived in Missouri, where he married his wife in 1848.  The couple then migrated on the famed wagon trail to Oregon, where their first child was born, but traveled south to Santa Clara, near San Jose, by 1852.  Then, the family came down to Los Angeles County and settled on Potrero de Felipe Lugo.  After selling out to Temple, Squires moved to the Rancho Sausal Redondo at what was commonly called "Halfway House," a stop on the main road from Los Angeles to the harbor at San Pedro.  Squires remained there for nearly twenty years, lost land in a foreclosure, and then moved to Orange, where he remained the rest of his life.

Edward Davis/Davies (1807-1859) was from Wales, as was his wife Margaret and apparently the two were Mormon converts (there was a significant conversion and migration of British subjects to the Mormon Church in the 1840s) because the two were married in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1850 and their first two children were married there.  A third child, Caleb, was born in San Bernardino in 1856 and that town had been established by Mormons sent to California by the church to establish a colony.  Somehow, Davis/Davies wound up at Potrero de Felipe Lugo and made the acquaintance of Squires and they established their mill, about 1856 or 1857, though why it was referred to as "old" is puzzling, unless it was built earlier by Morrillo and Romero.  In any case, Davis passed away in November 1859 at La Puente, just east of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, and his widow Margaret married Richard Chapman, an Englishman, but the couple then disposed of their property to Temple.

Temple continued to operate this grist mill for grinding wheat, corn and other field crops for some years and expanded his holdings on Potrero Lugo.  First, with his father-in-law Workman, the two obtained the remaining 1/2 interest in the ranch, or the other 1,000 acres, from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar.  Then, Temple acquired another 160-acre section that had been owned by Cyrus Lyon, who later went on to operate a well-known stage stop at Lyon's Station near Newhall in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles.

Then, in conjunction with his father-in-law Workman, Temple obtained a quit claim in February 1859 from Morrillo and Magdalena Vejar for their half of the ranch; that is, the remaining 1,000 acres.  Three years later, in October 1862, Workman quit claimed his interest in Potrero de Felipe Lugo to his daughter, Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple.  It was a common matter to place property in the hands of wives and daughters as a way to protect assets in case of financial issues or to merely provide something for grandchildren in the event of the untimely death of a husband or father.  In any case, for about thirteen years, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, except for lot 8, was held by the Workman and Temple families.

The next major change came in the early 1870s, when the brothers George (1823-1896) and James Durfee (1840-1920) formally acquired just under 70 acres of the ranch from F. P. F. Temple.  The Durfees became prominent farmers and ranchers in the area and rented land from Temple before acquiring the property from him.  There will be a separate entry on this blog about the interesting background of the Durfees, but they were early walnut farmers on their ranch, of which 60 acres was west of Durfee Avenue near South El Monte High School and 9 acres on the east side of the road within the Whittier Narrows Nature Center.  While George later moved to Los Angeles, where he died, James remained at the ranch until his passing.  James was also a founder, with Temple, of the La Puente School District, which organized in 1863 and of which there will be a separate post.

Meantime, the land claim filed for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, as noted above, in 1852 and approved by both the land claims commission and federal district court, finally ended with the issuance of a patent by the federal government on 15 June 1871.  This long delay was common, as most claims were approved by 1860, but then the Civil War and its aftermath meant that most patents were unissued until much later.

In late 1875, the ownership of Potrero de Felipe Lugo changed dramatically when the Workman and Temple families were beset by financial problems through their Los Angeles bank of Temple and Workman, which had opened in late 1871, but had also been heavily invested in oil, railroad, real estate and other projects, as well as poorly managed.  When the state economy went into a tailspin in late Summer 1875, the bank suspended operations for a few months while seeking loans. 

Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, a San Francisco mining magnate, who had purchased Rancho Santa Anita to the north, was looking for more property acquire and saw that Temple and Workman, the largest landowners in Los Angeles County, were in deep trouble.  He arranged a loan to float the bank and also made a separate acqusition at the same time, in December 1875, for 297 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo along its northern edge for $10,000.  The same day Baldwin had arranged to acquire from Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple another 203 acres from either Potrero de Felipe Lugo or Potrero Grande, its western neighbor, for $30 an acre, or just over $6,000, though it appears he selected that parcel from the latter rancho.

The remainder of the rancho, excepting the land held by the Durfees and the separate property of Antonia Margarita Workman de Temple that was not included in the 297-acre sale, was put down as collateral for the bank loan, which was also made in early December 1875.  Within six weeks, however, the bank failed, as depositors rushed in to close their accounts and left with Baldwin's borrowed money, and the loan was defaulted.  After three years, to allow the interest to accumulate far beyond repayment, Baldwin foreclosed and, in 1879, took possession of the lion's share of Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo.

Mrs. Temple, having retained her property, distributed her Potrero de Felipe Lugo holdings to some of her children, obviously in the hopes that they could do something to make a living in the aftermath of the devastating bank failure, which brought bankruptcy to the Temple family.  In November 1876, she deeded 100 acres to her son Thomas, who had been a cashier in the bank, and who had just married.  Thomas evidently tried farming for a period, but with a bad economy and a punishing drought that occurred in 1876-77, he could not pay his taxes and portions of the property was sold at a tax auction in March 1879.  Thomas eventually disposed of the remainder of his land and then moved to Mexico before returning in later years to Los Angeles.

An additional 400 acres of Mrs. Temple's was given to other children of hers, most notably John Harrison Temple, who had just returned from schooling in Massachusetts after the bank failure.  Only 21 years old, John took possession of land east of Durfee Avenue, comprising most of what is now the Whittier Narrows Nature Center, built himself a residence and planted over 130 acres to walnut trees.  Unlike his older brother Thomas, though, John was able to make his ranch profitable and remained on it for over a decade.  There was, though, a lawsuit against John filed in February 1887 by Lucky Baldwin, who claimed that Temple illegally occupied some of his land.  The case dragged on until March 1889, when the court ruled that Temple had a good, valid title and there was no infringement.  By then, however, Temple's second oldest brother, Francis, had died in 1888 at the Workman Homestead in La Puente, and John became its new owner.  He moved from the Potrero de Felipe Lugo ranch, but appears to have rented it until it was sold in 1892 to A. N. Davidson.

Mrs. Temple also placed 100 acres of land in the hands of her mother, Nicolasa Workman, and this property was rented out by tenant farmers, though there was also a tax payment lapse in 1882 for the parcel.  As is often the case, the term "land rich, cash poor" applies, because if a property could not be made profitable to cover expenses and taxes, it would often wind up sold at a tax sale, auction or private sale and the Temple and Workman holdings at Potrero de Felipe Lugo definitely apply, as they lost everything on the ranch by 1892.



This is page 2 of the 1858 Hancock survey for Potrero de Felipe Lugo, showing the northeastern section, including the northern boundary being the "Road from Los Angeles to San Bernardino" or today's Valley Boulevard, as well as neighboring lands of the ranchos La Puente and San Francisquito and the "Lands of the Mission San Gabriel."  Snaking along the right side of the ranch is the "San Gabriel or Azusa River."

Meantime, Lucky Baldwin, along with partner Richard Garvey, subdivided their 1,500 acres of Potrero de Felipe Lugo, for sale during the great land boom of the 1880s.  In a publication called the Illustrated Herald in August 1888, Baldwin's nephew and estate manager, Henry Unruh, published their offering of the land in ten-acre parcels.  The price was $175 to $250 an acre and the claim was that "this tract will produce anything which grows in Los Angeles county, with perhaps the exception of citrus fruit," although it was then stated that "oranges, indeed, will grow here . . . but these trees do their best on the mesa land." 

Still, it was observed that "The Felipe Lugo is what is known as moist land.  On this are grown to greatest perfection all leguminous crops, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and wheat and barley, as well as alfalfa.  They will produce a ctop of any of these without any artificial irrigation in our years of least rainfall.  In the more favorable years two crops can be raised on such lands in the twelve months.  The soil is free of stiff clay, and is most easily worked at all seasons."

The piece went on to note that "cereals and vegetables are not all that grow on such rich bottom lands as the Felipe Lugo.  Many of the finest vineyards in the county are found in just such localities.  These, at their best, could not be bought for $500 an acre, when in bearing.  These damp lands, too, are admirably adapted to the growth of the English walnut—one fo the most profitable crops of this section.  The orchards require the very minimum of care, and pay not less than $100 an acre, when at their best.  Then, here, is the choicest home of the apple, the pear, and many similar varieties of deciduous fruit."

And, there was more!  The Felipe Lugo was deemed perfect for dairies and alfalfa, the latter being the common feed for cattle, who could graze year-round in the mild climate of the area.  The bottom line, the sales pitch went, was "the thirfty and industrious farmer who enters on these pursuits, with intelligence, will be able to make for himself a very pleasant home in a lovely climate, and in time he will grow into affluent circumstances on such farms as are now offered so cheap as the Felipe Lugo."

Well, it was a boom time that was just about to go bust in 1888.  Four years later, in the same periodical, Unruh made another pitch, this time combining Potrero de Felipe Lugo with the La Merced and San Franciscquito ranches, also acquired by Baldwin by foreclosure from Temple, Workman and, the case of La Merced, Juan Matias Sanchez.

A total of 3,000 acres was subdivided and 800 had been sold by March 1892.  Terms were $150 to $200 an acre with a third down in cash, and the rest due in five years and 8% interest.  The lands were described as "soil is exceedingly rich black loam of great depth; always moist and producing enormous crops of corn, alfalfa, potatoes, etc., without irrigation; admirable for walnuts and deciduous fruits."

In 1893, however, came another national economic depression and there were six years of drought in the Los Angeles region, so it is likely that sales were lacking at Potrero de Felipe Lugo until after 1900.  In fact, after Baldwin's death in 1909 and with the disposition of his estate, much of his San Gabriel Valley land, including, presumably, Rancho Potrero de Felipe Lugo, was sold off to farmers. 

After a series of floods, especially in 1914 and 1938, some of the southern part of the rancho was earmarked for flood control purposes held by the federal government and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Some of that land is leased to the county for the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area and Whittier Narrows Nature Center.  The northern part, over time, became developed for housing and commercial uses in the cities of South El Monte and El Monte.

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

Rancho Potrero Grande and Misión Vieja

The final of the four ranchos in and surrounding the community of Misión Vieja, or Old Mission, was Potrero Grande.  This former ranch of the Mission San Gabriel was granted to, as records show, "Manuel Antonio, an Indian," meaning a neophyte of the mission, and who was otherwise known as Manuel Antonio Pérez. 

Born about 1798, Pérez may have received his surname (the native peoples, of course, not having there prior to the Spanish occupation) from Eulalia Pérez, the famed llavalera (or keeper of the keys) at Mission San Gabriel.  One of the few documents mentioning him noted that he was an "Indio viudo de Margarita," or "Indian widow of Margarita," this wife obviously being another native person. 

The document, in fact, was a reference to Manuel Antonio's marriage in 1824 to María Florentina Alvitre.  Florentina was a daughter of Sebastian Alvitre and María Rufina Hernandez, early settlers of Alta California in the Spanish era, and many of whose children were among the earliest, if not the first, settlers of the Misión Vieja community.  The couple had at least six children, though some sources indicate that only two daughters lived.

It has also been stated that Manuel Antonio was a Mission San Gabriel mayordomo, or ranch foreman, and that this was the primary factor in his receiving the grant to Potrero Grande.  This was done on 8 April 1845 by Governor Pío Pico, and the amount of land specified was one square league, or 4,432 acres.

The shape of the rancho is a slanted parallellogram with the southern line running fairly straight to the west diving the rancho from its neighbor, Rancho La Merced, from Rosemead Boulevard a short distance above the intersection of San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue, crossing the Río Hondo and then San Gabriel Boulevard a short distance west of Lincoln Avenue, skirting the southern edge of the Montebello Town Center, crossing the 60 Freeway at the Paramount Boulevard exit and running along the south edge of Resurrection Cemetery and crossing Potrero Grande Drive before turning northeast.

The western boundary, then runs west of Potrero Grande Drive and crossed Del Mar Street, Graves Avenue, San Gabriel Boulevard and Walnut Grove Avenue before coming to a point just below Interstate 10 along Burton Avenue in Rosemead.

The northern boundary moves on a slight southeasterly angle crossing Rosemead Boulevard, the Río Hondo, Merced Avenue and the intersection of Garvey Avenue at Santa Anita Avenue before moving past Tyler Avenue and Peck Road before coming to a point at Mountain View Road just north of Elliott Avenue in El Monte.

The eastern line travels in a southwest direction along Mountain View and then east of Tyler and Santa Anita through South El Monte neighborhoods, crossing the 60 Freeway and then into the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area.  Once the line crossed Santa Anita Avenue after it turns in towards Durfee Avenue, it follows the northern edge of Rancho Potrero Chico and through Legg Lake.  Crossing Rosemead Boulevard the line heads toward the Río Hondo and then turns sharply to the southeast and back to the beginning at Rosemead.

In all, large sections of the cities of South San Gabriel, Rosemead, South El Monte and El Monte are within the rancho, along with unincorporated Los Angeles County lands falling within the flood plain of the San Gabriel River system and managed by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.

As to Pérez, his ownership of the rancho appears to have lasted only about seven years.  He does appear in the 1850 federal census, which was taken in early 1851 (Pérez and family were enumerated on 11 February) because California was not admitted as a state until September 1850.  There, he is listed as 52 years old, and is shown as a farmer with a self-declared value of real estate as $2,000.  Listed with him is "María," meaning María Florentina, age 40, and three children: María Bárbara, 21, María Antonia, 16, and Juan, 7.

In addition, the agricultural schedule of that census shows that Manuel Antonio had 20 unimproved acres of land valued at $200.  This is a curious item, because there was a column next to that for improved land and there is a blank there.  How his self-declared value of $2,000 is to be squared with the agricultural census valuation of one-tenth of that and only twenty listed acres is not clear.  In any case, he was shown as having $20 worth of farm implements, eleven horses, two oxen, 100 cattle, and sixty sheep and the the value of his animals was given as $1,440.

Within a little more than a year, however, much had changed.  On 9 June 1852, Manuel Antonio sold 172 acres of Potrero Grande to Inocencia Reyes, who happened to be his neighbor in the aforementioned census.  Inocencia, as noted elsewhere in this blog, was the common-law wife of Teodocio Yorba, of the prominent family of what is now northeast Orange County, and bore him a large family until they were married in 1860, three years before Yorba's death.  In the 1850 (1851) census, Inocencia had five children, ranging from a few months to sixteen years.  Perhaps she raised her family on this property she acquired from Pérez.

Four months later, on 13 October 1852, a land claim to Potrero Grande, under the terms of the California land claims act of 1851 concerning Spanish and Mexican grants, was not made by Manuel Antonio, but by Juan Matias Sánchez, half-owner of the neighboring Rancho La Merced.  There doesn't appear to be a located deed for the sale of everything but Inocencia's property to Sánchez and a reason is certainly not known.  Did Pérez sell because of financial problems, even though the Gold Rush was in full flower and money was made in copious amounts by southern California rancheros supplying fresh beef to mining region residents?  Perhaps he passed away in 1851 or 1852 and his widow decided to sell the property.  At this point, there is no way to tell.

This detail from a copy of an 1877 map of southern California shows the Rancho Potrero Grande, which is noted as having 4,431 acres.  There are some subdivided areas, including at the northeast portion by Lucky Baldwin, who bought 203 acres of the ranch in December 1875, prior to foreclosing on most of the rest of the property a few years later.

As to the descendants of Manuel Antonio and Florentina Pérez, it appears that two daughters survived of their several children. In the 1860 census, no one by that name appears in the El Monte township count. But, a decade later, there was María Pérez, 31, and daughter Josefa, 7, living next to Pedro Archuleta and his wife Bárbara. It would seem that these would be the two oldest daughters and the 1880 census showed them living in the same houseshold. Juan Matias Sánchez, the new owner of Potrero Grande, married Luisa Archuleta, the recent widow of Rafael Martinez, and Luisa's brother, Pedro, married Barbara Pérez.  The Archuletas like Sánchez were from New Mexico.  Aside from these census listings, little information is known about the Pérez descendants (though someone might see this and help fill in the gap?)

What is known is that Sánchez owned the vast majority of the rancho and, interestingly, there is a record of a mortgage that Sánchez executed with Andrés Pico, a well-known Californio hero of the resistance against the Americans during the Mexican-American War and younger brother of the governor who granted the rancho to Manuel Antonio.  By October 1853, however, the mortgage was released, as Sánchez obviously repaid a loan for which the rancho was used as collateral.

In March 1857, Sánchez sold half of his stake in Potrero Grande to his compadres F. P. F. Temple and William Workman.  As stated elsewhere in this blog, Sánchez had been mayordomo for Workman at the latter's portion of Rancho La Puente, east of Old Mission.  Workman obtained Rancho La Merced, below Potrero Grande, by foreclosure from Casilda Soto de Lobo in the early 1850s and then granted it to his son-in-law Temple and to Sánchez. This friendship between the three men was further manifested in Sánchez' sale of the half of Potrero Grande to Workman and Temple, but there may have been a more practical reason.

The land claim initiated by Sánchez in 1852 came, as they all did, with great cost.  Lawyers to represent the claimant and surveys to submit to authorities required ample funds.  Sánchez did have his claim confirmed in October 1854 by the commission that heard the initial cases.  As with all land claims cases, the federal government automatically appealed, regardless of who the claimant was, so that they could try to free up as much land as possible in a California that was the site of huge numbers of migrants who wanted land when their golden dreams in the mines failed, as they usually did.

Still, Sánchez prevailed at the local federal district court at the end of 1856, to which the feds appealed the claim to the same court.  This was rejected in March 1858 and there was an option for the government to pursue the appeal to the Supreme Court in Washington.  Not only was this not exercised, but Sánchez had the distinction of being the first claimaint in the Los Angeles region to receive his patent, which was issued in July 1859.  Whereas the average time to get to that level was seventeen agonizing, expensive years, Sánchez was able to get through the process in just under seven.

However, the land claims papers reveal that there were problems.  First, Gold Rush-era migrations brought large numbers of people from the American South to the area in the early 1850s, leading to the settlement of the "New American Town", otherwise known as Lexington and then El Monte.  Some of these new arrivals occupied lands that were within the Potrero Grande boundaries.  Richard Fryer, one of these migrants who later moved to Spadra in today's Pomona, filed an affidavit that, when he arrived, Manuel Antonio had placed "flag polls" with white rags atop them to mark his boundary along those areas, mainly to the north and east, where the settlers were locating their new homes.  According to Fryer, he decided to move two miles north to avoid any conflict.  There were others, however, who did not.

Meantime, the sale of half of the Potrero Grande property to Temple and Workman came along three months after Sánchez had his claim heard successfully in federal court in Los Angeles.  It may be that Temple and Workman agreed to help with the thorny problem of squatters if Sánchez sold them half the ranch, and that half probably included the disputed area.  It also turned out that the official ranch survey for the land claim, drawn up in 1857 by county surveyor Henry Hancock (whose Rancho La Brea was later part-owned by his son and is the location of the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles), was paid for by Workman.

Indeed, more affidavits were filed, by William W. Rubottom (another Southerner who came to El Monte, later ran a tavern and hotel at Rancho Cucamonga, built a cut-off road with Temple from Los Angeles to Cucamonga, and then settled and named Spadra for his home area in Arkansas) and Doctor Nehemiah Beardslee, who lived in the Azusa/Duarte area.  Beardslee stated that, in 1854, Sánchez walked him along the rancho boundaries, perhaps to show the doctor that he had a legitimate border over which squatters had breached. 

Rubottom, meantime, stated that Workman offered to sell him, in 1857 shortly after acquiring his part of Potrero Grande, his new lands at $6 an acre, but that Rubottom was concerned that "as this affiant and many others had settled upon what they supposed to be public land, but by the owners of said grant was claimed to be upon said grant," he turned down the offer.  Workman asked Rubottom to have Sánchez walk the boundaries with him. 

Further, Rubottom noted that, "he had a conversation with the said William Workman after Hancock had made the survey of said Rancho or grant, and that said Workman stated to him that he had paid to said Henry Hancock, the sum of Seven thousand dollars [underlining originally in the affidavit here and below] . . . and that he had loaned him Seven thousand dollars more."  It might be noted that Hancock was also part-owner of Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas and lost it to Workman in foreclosure in 1862, perhaps because of his loan.  Workman retained ownership of that section of Rodeo de las Aguas for seven years before selling it, not knowing this would later by Beverly Hills (and its famed Rodeo Drive!)

This detail from an 1861 map showing land claims in California includes #371 at the left side, which refers to the Rancho Potrero Grande, the first patented claim in the Los Angeles region.  From an original at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

With the issuance of the patent in 1859, Sánchez, Temple and Workman were able to pursue legal action against twenty-seven settlers/squatters and filed an ejectment suit in local district court.  The settlers tried first to have the patent rescinded and then claimed that there was an expired two-year statute of limitations that prevented the owners from pursuing eviction against their clients.  They also stated that the lands were swampy from overflow from the Río Hondo and San Gabriel River and were perhaps not accurately surveyed and that any surveys had fraudulently located their property in the rancho rather than on public land.

District Court Judge Benjamin Hayes, however, issued a ruling in early 1862 that favored the owners (at the same term of that court, Workman filed for a foreclosure on Hancock and others and got his "Beverly Hills" property that Fall.)  Yet, it appears that at least some of the squatters remained on disputed property for years afterward.

In early 1874, F. P. F. Temple requested the county sheriff, William R. Rowland, to eject Bernard Newman from land on Potrero Grande.  When a deputy was dispatched to serve papers, Newman shot and badly wounded the peace officer, who did survive.  Newman, meantime, was convicted for the crime and went to prison.  Stories of "land grabbing" by Temple, Workman and Sánchez appeared in Los Angeles newspapers even after this, but those stories were to be halted by a sudden turn of events.

As Temple and Workman moved further into business and development in Los Angeles' first growth boom, from the late 1860s into the middle 1870s, they got into banking, first with a partner, Isaias W. Hellman (who later ran Wells Fargo among other successful endeavors) and then on their own.  When the economy in California crashed in late August 1875 due to a silver mining stock bubble bursting in Virginia City, Nevada, a panic erupted.  The bank of Temple and Workman lacked cash reserves but faced hordes of depositors and were unable to satisfy their demands.  Consequently, the bank closed until a loan could be arranged with Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin of San Francisco, who had pocketed millions of dollars in profit in Virginia City stock sales that helped bring the crash and then began investing in San Gabriel Valley real estate, notably Rancho Santa Anita earlier in 1875.  In December 1875, just before the loan was executed, Baldwin purchased 203 acres for just over $6,000 of either the Potrero Grande, the Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east, or both, from Sánchez, Temple and Workman.  The 1877 map shown above seems to indicate that he chose property on Potrero Grande.

The loan, however, required the participation of Sanchez and his shares of the La Merced and Potrero Grande ranchos, a tale that will be told later in this blog.  Regardless, the loan was provided but was futile, as depositors closed their accounts.  The bank failed in early 1876 and Temple, Workman and Sánchez were ruined.

Baldwin waited three years to foreclose, allowing the interest to accumulate so that it would be impossible, as if it weren't already, to redeem the mortgage and its rising principal.  After assuming ownership of Potrero Grande, he sold 566 acres of the ranch in the northwest corner to Richard Garvey.  Garvey, an Irishman who came to Los Angeles in the late 1850s, was involved in mining and became associated with Baldwin at a gold mine near today's Big Bear Lake.  He was an agent of Baldwins for many years and was also the court receiver sent to William Workman's residence on 17 May 1876 to serve him notice about pending court proceedings for Workman's estate in the aftermath of the bank failure.  Distraught at the prospect of losing a real estate empire carefully constructed over thirty years, Workman took his own life that evening.  Later, Baldwin and Garvey had a falling-out over how rents were collected on the ranchos near Old Mission that the former had acquired and the latter was helping to manage.  Garvey was a shrewd businessman and amassed a substantial estate that made him a founder of Monterey Park and lived well into the 20th century.

Meanwhile, William Workman, in October 1862, decided to transfer his 1/4 share in the Potrero Grande to his daughter, Margarita Temple and her children, probably as a safeguard to keep land in the family's hands in case of any unforeseen problems.  This 1100 or so acres remained in Workman's control until his death.  Not long after Mrs. Temple took possession, she deeded the parcel to two of her sons, Francis and William, who then filed for a legal partition to distinguish their land from that of Baldwin.  William, however, borrowed money from the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles, using his 550 acres as collateral, and, after not repaying the loan, faced foreclosure and lost his land in June 1880.  A few months later, Francis Temple deeded his 550 acres over to Baldwin and Garvey, he having taken possession of the home and 75 acres of his grandfather William Workman, which Francis had managed and occupied since Workman's death.  Perhaps the sale of his Potrero Grande land was his way of acquiring the Workman Homestead, which took place at about the sae time in 1880.

From 1880, then, Baldwin and Garvey assumed ownership of all of Potrero Grande and subdivision gradually ensued, accelerating after Baldwin's death in 1909.

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Collections Manager, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

Rancho La Merced and Misión Vieja

The Rancho La Merced, comprising 2,363 acres or a half-league in the old Spanish/Mexican system of measurement, lay south and west of Rancho Potrero Chico with San Gabriel Boulevard being a general (though not precise) boundary between the two ranches in the area in and around that thoroughfare's intersection with Rosemead Boulevard.

La Merced actually stretched east to west from the San Gabriel River and then in a vaiation of a pie-shape to the northwest, with one boundary running through the Montebello Town Center and across the 60 Freeway at Paramount Boulevard, then forming the southern boundary of Resurrection Cemetery and the northern boundary of La Loma Park in Monterey Park before coming to a point at Edison Trails Park at Garfield Avenue. 

It meets a line that moves southeast from that point through residential neighborhoods in Monterey Park and takes in part of the border of the landfill that is on the south side of the 60 Freeway and entering Montebello.  After crossing Montebello Boulevard near Avenida La Merced and then across Lincoln Avenue and Poplar Avenue, it reaches its southeast terminus at Beverly Boulevard and the Rio Hondo (the Old San Gabriel River.) 

The boundary then moves northward to the Whittier Narrows Dam and goes along its southern flank and eastward through Streamland Park and along the north side of Kruse Road and the Pico Rivera Municipal Golf Course.  After crossing Siphon Road (the old San Gabriel Boulevard route to the current San Gabriel River), the line enters the Whittier Narrows Nature Center briefly before turning back northwest to pass Durfee Avenue and then turn west to Rosemead and the line that this description started with.

The rancho, long a part of the Mission San Gabriel system, became subject to private ownership by a land grant from Mexican California authorities after the secularization of the missions in the mid-1830s.  On 8 October 1844, Governor Manuel Micheltorena issued title to Casilda Soto, in a very rare instance of a California land grant being given to a woman.  Casilda Soto was the widow of José Cecilio Villalobo, who also went by the surname of Lobo. 

Cecilio Villalobo's mother was Maria Beltran, a native of Horcasitas, Sonora and born about 1756, and his father Juan José, born in Villa de Sinaloa, ca. 1742, was a soldier with the Rivera-Moncada expedition of 1781 that accompanied the 44 pobladores that settled the newly-founded pueblo of Los Angeles.  Shortly afterward, in 1782, Juan José was sent with a detachment that founded the Santa Barbara Presidio.  The family was in Santa Barbara when Cecilio was born there on 22 November 1786, but, by the time of the 1790 census of Los Angeles, the family was in the pueblo, listed under the name of Lobo, with Juan José shown as a muleteer.  About two years later, in early June 1792, Juan José died.

Cecilio, meanwhile, married Casilda Soto at Mission San Gabriel in early November 1812 and a few years later, about 1816, the couple were living in San Diego.  When the 1836 census of the Los Angeles district was conducted, the couple and five children were residing on what was termed the Rancho Santa Gertrudes, a spin-off in 1834 of the vast Rancho Nieto grant of 1784, and generally considered to be in the vicinity of modern La Mirada, Whittier, Santa Fe Springs and nearby areas.  It seems like, though, that the Lobos were residing in what became Misión Vieja, or Old Mission.  Although an online source lists Cecilio's death as taking place in 1847, the grant documents to his wife for La Merced in October 1844 refer to her as a widow, so he therefore died sometime between 1836 and then.   

As to why Casilda Soto de Lobo received the La Merced grant, this appears to have to do with the fact that her mother was a Nieto, the family that owned Rancho Santa Gertrudes, where the Lobos were counted in the 1836 census, and that connection might have facilitated the grant to La Merced, though this will probably never be documentable.  Casilda's mother, Juana María Nieto, born about 1771 at Buenavista, Sonora, was the daughter of María de los Reyes Armenta and Juan Crispin Pérez Nieto (commonly known by the Pérez surname), both, incidentally, born in Villa de Sinaloa, the hometown of Juan José Villalobo/Lobo, the father of Casilda's husband.  Crispin Pérez was the younger brother of Manuel Pérez Nieto, who had received the massive grant referred to above, and resided on what became the Rancho Santa Gertrudes after the Nieto grant division.

This detail from a reproduced 1877 map of southern California shows the Rancho La Merced with its distinctive pointed west end located within the community designation of Old Mission.  Just above La Merced is the tiny Rancho Potrero Chico and the Rancho Potrero Grande.  At left is the name "A. Repetto," for Alessandro Repetto, an Italian-born sheep rancher who ran his cattle in the hills of what is now Monterey Park and whose son, Timoteo, owned Potrero Chico land for decades.  Click on the map to see an enlarged view in a separate window.  Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

In any case, it was under Casilda Soto de Lobo's ownership of Rancho La Merced that a small adobe house was built on a bluff overlooking the Rio Hondo, the original channel of the San Gabriel River.  Señora Lobo resided in the house and superintended the ranch with her children when the American conquest occurred during the Mexican-American War in 1846-47; in fact, a skirmish between American and Californio forces occurred just downstream on the Rio Hondo not far from the newly-built Soto adobe house (a monument commemorating the "Battle of Rio San Gabriel," which took place on 8-9 January 1847, stands at this general location where Washington Boulevard crosses today's Rio Hondo at Bluff Road in Montebello.

Shortly after the controversial war's conclusion, the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill changed the landscape of California in so many ways.  While some cattle ranchers immediately benefitted financially from the growing demand for local beef in the gold fields, Casilda Soto de Lobo borrowed $2000 from William Workman, co-owner of the Rancho La Puente just east of her La Merced property.  In return for the loan, she used her ranch as collateral and a mortgage document was drawn up on 18 December 1850. 

Within a few months, it seems as if Señora Lobo was unable to repay the loan, but rather than file a foreclosure suit in the local district court, Workman executed a deed with Lobo on 30 April 1851, in which he purchased the La Merced for $2500, which might be interpreted as an actual $4500 purchase for the land.  Did Workman take this route in some form of sympathy towards a widower with children?  The answer will likely never be known.

What is known is that, within a short period time, Workman and his wife, Nicolasa Urioste, executed a deed with their son-in-law, F. P. F. Temple (husband of their daughter, Margarita) and Juan Matias Sanchez, formerly the majordomo or ranch foreman for Workman at La Puente, giving the two equal ownership of La Merced.  Though this deed was dated 15 September 1852, it was already known that the Temples were living on the ranch; in fact, within a month of the deed from Casilda Soto de Lobo, on 25 May 1851, their third son, William, was born at La Merced.

Prior to the 1852 deed, the Temples, who had lived mainly in Los Angeles from the time of their 1845 marriage because F. P. F. Temple was clerk in the store (the first in the town) owned by his brother, Jonathan until 1849, when he went to the gold fields.  Evidently finding, as many did, that digging for gold was not a profitable enterprise for the labor required, Temple may have been given La Merced so that he could have his own cattle ranch, so he could take advantage of the opportunities found in supplying beef to the gold mining communities.  Indeed, F. P. F. Temple became a major landowner and businessman in the Tuolumne County boom towns of Sonora and Columbia. 

Upon receiving the deed, the Temples built an L-shaped adobe house that has been said to have been 110 x 70 feet in dimensions--this would be almost 8,000 square feet, which seems hard to believe, unless those dimensions applied to the grounds immediately surrounding the residence.  This home stood at what is now the southeast corner of Rosemead Boulevard and San Gabriel Boulevard/Durfee Avenue and was the center of a cattle ranch and farm that was highly successful for about a quarter century.

The same could be said, as well, for the Soto Adobe, which was occupied by Juan Matias Sanchez.  He added a wing to the building, stocked his portion of the ranch with cattle and also raised crops on small sections of the land.  While not as well known at the time or subsequently as Workman and Temple, Sanchez was a successful rancher and farmer, to the extent that, within a few years of his moving onto La Merced, he was able to acquire another ranch, which will be the subject of the next post, the Potrero Grande.

Meantime, there was a notable twist to the story of Rancho La Merced that took place in 1875.  William Workman and F. P. F. Temple were the proprietors of one of the two commercial banks in Los Angeles, but, when the state's economy fell into a tailspin that summer because of overspeculation in silver mine stocks in Virginia City, Nevada and then the California Bank in San Francisco collapsed, the Temple and Workman bank found itself besieged by depositors looking to withdrawn their money--money that was not in the vault because the bank was funding many investment projects, such as land subdivisions, railroads and others, in the Los Angeles region.

When the two men realized that they needed a loan to try and save their bank, they also had to determine which of their massive landholdings, amounting to tens of thousands of acres of land, they would use as collateral for a loan.  In the case of La Merced, the September 1852 deed from Workman to Temple and Sanchez, it turned out, had never been recorded.  So, on 20 November 1875, almost exactly twenty-three years later, it finally was.

More on this and other stories connected to the Panic of 1875 in a future post!

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

Rancho Potrero Chico and Misión Vieja

In the general community of Old Mission or Misión Vieja, there were several ranchos created out of the former lands of the Mission San Gabriel, which was originally established along the Rio Hondo just north and east of San Gabriel Boulevard and west of Rosemead Boulevard in 1771 and then moved to its current location within about three years.  Before that, the Gabrieleño Indian villages commonly known as Shevaanga or Siba and Isanthcag-na was likely on or near the same spot.

Although the secularization of the missions took place in the mid-1830s, it was about a decade before the ranchos at Old Mission were granted.  The smallest, but the most historically significant, was Rancho Potrero Chico known also as Potrero de la Misión Vieja de San Gabriel.

A potrero is pasture land, so with the well-watered lowlands around the Rio Hondo (the old channel of the San Gabriel River) being so desirable for the maintaining of cattle, it is easy to see why the three ranchos named as potreros were of interest to potential grantees.

This detail from a very large 1877 map of southern California shows Rancho Potrero Chico in the "Old Mission" district with Rancho La Merced to the south, Rancho Potrero Grande (identified by the 4431 acres mark) to the north, west and east, and the 45 degree angle line marking the boundary between Potrero Grande and Potrero de Felipe Lugo to the east.

Rancho Potrero Chico was granted on 9 December 1844 by Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Juan Alvtire and Antonio Valenzuela and the size of the land in the grant was said to have been 1,200 by 450 varas.  A vara is a unit of length that varied throughout Spanish-controlled areas, but in California was generally acknowledged to be 33 inches.  Using this, the size of this rancho would have been in the neighborhood of about 96 acres.  By any standard, this is an extraordinarily small rancho and it is not known why the grant was so small, unless it was understood to be specific pasture land held over from the original Mission San Gabriel's 1771-1774 occupation of the area.  Although Manuel Requena, alcalde (mayor) of Los Angeles, conducted a survey or diseño, this map does not appear to have survived. 

Basically, the Potrero Chico lies north of San Gabriel Boulevard and Durfee Avenue and is bisected by Rosemead Boulevard, with more of the ranch to the east of the latter road than to the west.  To the north is Legg Lake and the Whittier Narrows Regional Park.  While this is not entirely clear, it does appear as if the Alvitres took the western portion of the small ranch, while the Valenzuelas occupied the eastern section.  The reasons for this assumption are below.

As to the original grantees, Juan José Alvitre was born on 30 August 1798 in Los Angeles.  His mother, María Rufina Hernandez was a native of the presidio of Loreto in Baja California.  His father, Sebastian Alvtire, was born in Villa de Sinaloa in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico.  A soldier in the Spanish army of New Spain (Mexico), Alvtire married Rufina at Loreto.  He was one of the soldados del cuero (leather jackets) who were the military guard for the first European land exploration of California, the Portolá Expedition of 1769-1770.  He was, then, present when the expedition stopped at the San Gabriel River (which Portolá called San Miguel) and camped.  Father Juan Crespí, another member of the expedition who was scouting potential mission sites, found this area to be excellent for a mission, though considered the area now known as La Puente to be superior. 



This 1924 map of oil fields in the Montebello/Whittier districts shows the Rancho Potrero Chico as being separate from much of the land denoted as the Barry, Repetto and Alvitre holdings, which was clearly not the case from other maps, as seen below.  Clicking on any map in this post will show them in separate windows and in a larger size.

In any case, Sebastian Alvitre remained in the military for some years and was then a settler of San José in 1783 before migrating to Los Angeles seven years later.  Still later, Sebastian settled on the enormous Rancho Nieto and died in 1817 on what became the subdivided Santa Gertrudes rancho within the larger Nieto grant of 1784.  There'll be more about him and others in his family in subsequent posts on this blog, but at the Mission San Gabriel in October 1817 Juan José married María Tomasa Alvarado, who was born in 1799, at the Mission San Miguel in Baja California.  The couple settled on the Nieto rancho with Juan José's parents and had 14 children, of whom five died in infancy or childhood, and by the time their last child was born in 1839 the area they lived on had been subdivided into Santa Gertrudes.
Five years after that, the grant to Potrero Chico was made and the Alvitres resettled.  The couple appeared in the 1850 federal census, actually taken in early 1851 because California's statehood did not become official until September 1850, but they do not appear in the 1860 enumeration, so they evidently died in the interim. 

The other grantee, José Antonio Valenzuela, was the brother-in-law of Juan José Alvitre, being married to Juan's younger sister, Maria Dominga Alvitre, who was born in Los Angeles in 1805.  Valenzuela was almost a decade older than his wife, being born in 1796.  His father, Jose Manuel, was, like Sebastian Alvitre from Villa de Sinaloa, Sinaloa, Mexico and came to California for the 1781 expedition to Mission San Gabriel, which would evidently been the same that brought the original 44 pobladores to found the new pueblo of Los Angeles.  José Antonio and María Dominga had five children, including three sons and two daughters.  She passed away in 1853 and he followed a decade later.

Another 1920s era map that seems to show the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre sections as clearly within the boundaries of Rancho Potrero Chico.  This is getting confusing!

Within a few years of the Alvitres and Valenzuelas receiving the Potrero Chico grant, the American invasion of Mexico, including its department of Alta California, took place.  While the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which followed the conclusion of fighting in 1848, was drafted to protect land grants made under Mexican or Spanish rule, the article covering this was removed by the United States Senate before ratification.  Consequently, Congress passed a land claims act pertaining to California grants in March 1851, establishing a commission to hear testimony and receive evidence of legitimate claims to grants by their owners.  Although the commission approved 85% of the 800 or so claims put before them, the federal government pursued an automatic appeal of successful claims to the federal courts, going as far as the United States Supreme Court, if needed.

Alvitre and Valenzuela filed their land claim on 23 October 1852 when the commission held sessions in Los Angeles.  A little more than a year later, on 13 December 1853, the commission ruled in favor of the claimants, but, as noted above, the inevitable appeal by the feds was filed.  Two hearings before the Los Angeles federal district court were held in late January and early March 1856 and, again, Alvitre and Valenzuela, were successful.  Another year passed by and, in late February 1857, the district court officially dismissed a federal appeal.  Believing, evidently, that their grant was fully confirmed, the owners had a survey drawn up by county surveyor Henry Hancock in 1858, which gave the acreage as 100.07, although a 1956 engineering report submitted by Valenzuela heirs stated that Hancock recorded 96 acres, divided into two even sections of 48--presumably one for each family, with Alvitre to the west and Valenzuela to the east (as noted above.)  This report also gives 1850s tax figures showing that the two men were assessed for 48 acres each.

Within a few years, however, both Alvitre and Valenzuela were dead and a number of issues developed that greatly changed the situation at Potrero Chico.   First, although the 1858 survey was filed, there was no delivery of the patent by the federal government nor was any effort by heirs to seek one made.  In addition, whatever income might have been made from the ranch, whether by farming and cattle grazing, the economy in the United States generally and in California and the Los Angeles area specifically soured in the late 1850s as a national depression erupted in 1857 and the end of the Gold Rush took place in the state.  Then, in the winter of 1861-62, enormous flooding took place that ravaged the area, especially the Potrero Chico situated within the Whittier Narrows, where torrents of water from the San Gabriel (then called the Sierra Madre) Mountains rushed south toward the ocean.  Once the area dried out, a two-year drought ensued that brought further devastation to farmers and ranchers.

Continuing the confusion:  this map, also from about the 1920s or so, shows considerable sections of the Alvitre, Repetto, Barry and Davis properties outside, but some are inside, of the rancho boundaries.

It is not surprising then to find that two of Valenzuela's daughters decided to sell their inherited lands, probably because of the severe economic depression that existed in the early to mid 1860s.  In early March 1863, just after their father José Antonio Valenzuela's death, Salome and her husband Lauriano García and Siriaca and her husband Francisco Duarte deeded their inheritance, which was not specified in acres, to William Workman, F. P. F. Temple and Juan Matias Sánchez.  These three men were the wealthiest land owners in the general area.  Workman, who owned half of the enormous Rancho La Puente to the east had obtained the Rancho La Merced, immediately south of Potrero Chico in 1850 by foreclosure against its grantee, Casilda Soto de [Villa]Lobo and gave that ranch to his son-in-law, Temple and his La Puente mayordomo (foreman), Sanchez.  Over several years, during the depressed economic period of 1857 to 1863, the three began acquiring ranch lands in the Misión Vieja area, including portions of Potrero Chico.

Notably, the sale price was only $1, which suggests that Workman, Temple and Sanchez had perhaps loaned money to the sisters or, more likely, to their father or that there was some other consideration that would lead the Valenzuela women and their husbands to transfer the property for literally nothing.  Also of interest is that the land described was "known by the name of Potrero en media de Potrero Chico originally granted to Antonio Valenzuela and Juan Alvitre."  The italicized name indicates that this was half of the overall Potrero Chico consisting of separate pasture lands--in other words, this would be what Valenzuela had separate from Alvitre.

Meantime, another portion of Potrero Chico was sold a few weeks later, in early May 1863.  This was a tract, described as in the northeast portion of the ranch and measuring 350x250 varas in extent.  This is about 15 acres or so.  This tract had been sold in March 1853 by Antonio Valenzuela to Francisco Vejar, of the well-known family that owned much of present today Pomona, and Vejar was assessed for 1850s taxes on 13 acres.  Vejar, in turn, appointed his son Juan to be his "attorney in fact," handling the sale of this parcel to Workman, Temple and Sanchez.  This was another $1 deed, but the reason for it is also not known.

And, yet . . . this map, another early 20th century example, shows the Cruz, Barry, Repetto and Alvitre parcels as being mostly within the rancho and only partially without!  Again, click on any map here to see them in a different window.

This left approximately 40 acres or so that was retained by the Alvitre family on the western side of the ranch.  After the deaths of Juan José Alvitre and his wife Tomasa Alvarado, their estate administrator was their son José Anastacio, who was born in 1822 and lived into the 1910s and who took possession of the northwestern portion of the ranch.

Just below this was a section that was inherited by Anastacio's sister, Maria de la Cruz.  Although she was married in 1843 to José Ygnacio Cerradel, she had a later common-law relationship with Alessandro Repetto, a native of Genoa, Italy, who raised sheep on a ranch he owned in the hills of today's Monterey Park.  In 1866, Maria de la Cruz gave birth to a son named Timoteo, who claimed his birthplace as the Rancho Potrero Chico, presumably on his mother's land. 

In a parcel below Maria de la Cruz was one inherited by her sister, María Ventura, who was married to José Antonio Bermudez.  Finally, there was about 6 acres held by another sibling, Micaela Alvitre.  All four of these Alvitre tracts, owned by Anastacio, Cruz, Ventura, and Micaela, survived the the difficult years of the late 1850s and early 1860s, although Micaela did sell her tract to F. P. F. Temple in the early 1875.

Temple, Workman and Sanchez, however, experienced their own financial disaster, when the bank owned by the former two collapsed in 1876 due to poor management, bad investments, and a souring national and state economy.  Desperate to save their institution, Temple and Workman took out a loan from San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin, putting down their many landholdings as collateral.  Baldwin would not execute the loan without getting Sanchez to include his land in the deal.  The loan failed to prevent the failure of the Temple and Workman bank and the three men were ruined.  Subsequently, Baldwin foreclosed and took over the eastern portions of Potrero Chico deeded by the Valenzuela daughters and Vejar to Temple, Workman and Sanchez.  After Baldwin's 1909 death, his daughters Anita Baldwin Stocker and Clara Baldwin became owners of these areas of the ranch.

Meantime, Temple had deeded the Micaela Alvitre tract shortly after he acquired it to Venancia Peña de Davis, who had been associated for years with Sanchez, and Mrs. Davis occupied it with her children.  After Venancia died, her daughter Julia Davis de Cruz assumed ownership and resided on the property until her death in 1918.  By 1930, a man named Stearns was said to have bought her land, shown as a little over 8 acres.  As to the Ventura Alvitre de Bermudez tract, this soon passed to her daughter Adelaida (Elizabeth) Bermudez de Barry, who was married Irish-born George Barry.  After the death of Cruz Alvitre in 1907, her tract went to her son, Timoteo Repetto, who had lived for years in Mexico and worked as a professional acrobat with his Mexican-born wife, Maria before moving in with his mother on her 16-acre spread in 1902.  Finally, after Anastacio Alvitre died in the 1910s, his land went to son Pedro.  Timoteo Repetto and Pedro Alvitre proved to be the last of the original ranch descendants to live on Potrero Chico, remaining there well after the 1940 census (as shown in the last post on this blog.)

Still, there was an essential problem.  Despite the 1856-57 court judgments in favor of the Alvitre-Valenzuela land claim, no patent had been issued by the United States for Potrero Chico.  There were also serious questions about the actual boundaries and acreage of the ranch and, as was often the case with Henry Hancock's work, the survey he did in 1858 was seriously questioned.  Consequently, in 1920, the Joy Survey was conducted and came up with about 95 acres in total.  This map was accepted by the California Surveyor General and the commissioner of the federal General Land Office.  With a new survey on file, the heirs, presumably that of the Alvitre family, were able to request, finally, their government patent, which was dated 4 April 1923.

By 1923, some of their residents and heirs on Potrero Chico were leasing their properties for oil development, which had swept the area since the discovery of oil in the Montebello Hills several years prior.  In many cases, prospecting was unsuccessful, in others there was moderate production, with the best wells generally being the hills or very close to them.  In at least, possibly more, cases at Potrero Chico, there was at least some production, as Adelaida Bermudez de Barry and the estate of Julia Davis de Cruz (who died just weeks before oil drilling started on her land), in the southwestern sections closest to the hills, did receive at least some royalties.

In later years, though, oil or at least the potential of it seems to have driven the effort of the Valenzuela heirs to look into possible claims for the Potrero Chico lands they had once owned.  The 1956 engineering report mentioned above was created to advance the Valenzuela family's assertion that they had been deprived, by bad surveying, other legal actions, and even an unsourced report of violence, of oil-bearing (or potentially so) lands that they were entitled to as descendants of one of the original ranch grantees. 

A reading of the document, however, seems to show that the engineer was seeking to identify the location of the Potrero Chico ranch as being further west and south than the official maps show (basically over a reading of the original grant--the map of which is long gone--that indicates a reference to crests of hills that could have been the Montebello Hills to the southwest), including "covering" land owned by such successful oil leasors as Walter P. Temple (who was actually south of San Gabriel Boulevard) and William Prugh (whose land was on San Gabriel Boulevard, but near Darlington Avenue quite a distance north and west of Potrero Chico.)  Moreover, the engineer, who did a great deal of research which is useful, also made some erroneous statements about deeds and grants. 

One example is the claim that the 1853 deed from Valenzuela to Vejar was invalid because "having been made in 1853 over a year during which period the Mexicans could retain their old citizenship after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified, the transfer would clearly come under American Law . . . which would bar further action."  The problem with this interpretation is simply that the treaty guaranteed that citizens of Mexican California would automatically receive American citizenship with the transfer of California to the U. S. unless they elected otherwise within five years.  There is no evidence that Valenzuela elected to forego American citizenship and remain only a Mexican citizen and if he did nothing, he was automatically an American citizen and, therefore, entirely capable of issuing deeds.

In any case, it is hard to get around the fact that, in 1863, Salome and Siriaca Valenzuela, with their husbands, sold their interest in Potrero Chico to Workman, Temple and Sanchez and that there were many owners, residents and users of the land over the following 90 years.  In addition, the surveying clearly was a mess (as the examples of maps shows above does demonstrate), but the assertion that the ranch boundaries would be so much further west and south is based on reading very vague statements made in the 1840s and then from witness statements from Valenzuela descendants who were not alive when the original grant was made. 

Notably, one of them said that Valenzuela asked for land in the Montebello Hills (where valuable oil wells were located--some still operating today, though not for long) because he wanted to raise potatoes on them where it was drier than the land near the Rio Hondo.  Yet, how would raising potatoes have been conducted on rocky hilly slopes with little soil in which to plant and no easily obtainable water supply for irrigating?  If that were the case, than owners over the following decades, including Temple, Sanchez and Baldwin, would have been able to have farmed the hills before oil was found in 1917--but the hills apparently were only used for grazing animals.

Rancho Potrero Chico, though one of the smallest ranchos found in the Spanish and Mexican eras of California, is significant.  Home for thousands of years to Gabrieleño Indians whose village of Isanthcag-na was located in the area, the rancho also has an important connection to the first European settlement in Los Angeles County, the Mission San Gabriel.  Granted to descendants of early Spanish-era immigrants to California in the Alvitre and Valenzuela families, the rancho was occupied, ranched and farmed for a few generations with much of its parcels sold and deeded to others over the decades.  The oil industry coming in after 1917 transformed the rancho and, after World War II, the creation of the Whittier Narrows flood control district also meant great changes as residential use was banned.

Finally, the Bosque de Rio Hondo park opened at the northwest corner of Rosemead and San Gabriel boulevards and part of it may (depending on whether surveys are believed!) be within the rancho, while other sections have commercial, government and recreational use in and around Whittier Narrows Regional Park.

Misión Vieja and the 1940 Federal Census

A couple of weeks ago, the 1940 Federal Census was made publicly available by the National Archives.  Censuses are released for general use 72 years after they were taken, so this latest enumeration allows us to see what was happening in our country at the tail end of the Great Depression and just before the United States entered World War II.

There were some notable changes to this census compared to previous ones.  For example, the educational levels of citizens were recorded.  Another addition is that residents were asked if they were living in the same household or, if not, where they had lived five years prior, in 1935.  The census also asked for more specifics about employment, including number of weeks worked and earned income for the year 1939.  With both the living arrangements since 1935 and the employment questions, the Census Bureau clearly wanted to see the effects of the Depression on Americans.

At Old Mission, changes continued to occur as the use of land in the area changed.  On 13 April, census taker Robert West traveled down Rosemead Boulevard from Loma Avenue in what is now South El Monte and began his count within the area that is generally Misión Vieja.  Notably, most of those persons counted remained in the same household they had been in during 1935.  Of the thirty households that he found, only five, however, owned their houses, the rest being renters.  Some of this was attributable to employees of oil and gas companies that had leases or, perhaps, owned the land they were prospecting.  In some cases, residents might have been tenants of absentee landlords.

The first family was a rare one of propertyowners, this being Lorenzo Garcia, a 40-year old widower from Mexico, who lived with his four daughters and one son, all born in California.  The Garcias had been in the same house in 1935, but, while Lorenzo was out of work, he had two daughters, Conchita and Isabelle, who were working as private family servants.  As to education, Lorenzo studied up to the fourth grade, while his wife and two oldest daughters had some high school education.

Next to the Garcias was Severo and Micaela Ramirez, both 40, and their three sons and one daughter. While the parents were born in Mexico, their children were natives of California.  This family had also resided in the same house five years prior and Severo worked as a road construction laborer, while one of his daughters was a student employee.  Severo had a fourth-grade education, but his wife never went to school.  The two youngest children were still in school, but the oldest, 19 and 18, left after the eighth grade.

Following were 88-year old Filomeno Alvarez, who lived with his 75-year old wife Virginia.  Both were Mexican natives, had lived in the same house in 1935 and neither had ever attended school.  At their age, of course, it is not surprising the neither had a listed occupation.

Then, there were the remaining members of the Alvitre family still living at Old Mission, where members of the family had resided for over 100 years.  The patriarch was Pedro Alvitre, 75, who owned a modest home self-valued at $300.  Pedro was listed as a farmer and had never been to school.  He lived his 31-year old son, Angelo, and the young man's wife, Anita, age 26.  Both of them had been to school through the sixth grade and Angelo was employed as a nurseryman.  Living in a separate dwelling was Albert Alvitre, Pedro's son, who was residing with his wife Stella, 23, and their four young children, ranging from 2 months to 5 years old.  Albert, who had been through two years of high school, was listed as head of a farm, perhaps superintending his father's spread, passed down for nearly a century on the old Rancho Potrero Chico, close to the original location of Mission San Gabriel, from its 1771 founding to about three years later when it moved to its current site.  Finally, there was another son, Richard Alvitre, aged 30, his 20-year old wife Rebecca and their year-old son Rudolph.  Richard had also completed two years of high school and, like his brother Angelo, worked in a nursery.

After a farming family was counted, named Varza by the census taker, but possibly named Garza, and headed by a 47-year old native of Mexico named Daniel and his wife Mary, who had three girls from 7 to 13 years old, the enumeration movdd to the other remaining "old timer" left from the early days of the Old Mission community.  This was Pedro Alvitre's cousin, Timoteo Repetto. Aged 75, Repetto lived alone on some acreage that had been left to him through his mother, who was an Alvitre.  He had a much nicer home than his cousin, however, judging from the $3000 value assigned to it.  Shown also as a farmer, Timoteo was unusual with respect to his education, since he was shown as having attended two years of college, a rarity in the neighborhood.

The next household was that of Marcino and Isabella Serrano, natives of Mexico, who had three sons, a daughter and Mrs. Serrano's father, with them.  Marcino, who did not receive any schooling, was a building construction laborer.  Adjacent to them was another highly educated person, Mexican-born Juan Robles, age 45, who was a college graduate or at least had attended four years of higher education.  Also different was his occupation:  Robles was listed as "proprietor, fish pond."  Evidently, he operated either a fish farm or, more likely a place where people could do a little fishing.  In this general area is Legg Lake and maybe this was a predecessor of sorts.  After Robles was the household of Pablo and Julia Amaro and Pablo's father, Amado, who was listed as 95 years old and would have been the oldest Old Mission resident.  Pablo worked as a farmer and he and his wife had completed the eighth grade while Amado went only as far as the second.  All of the people mentioned above had been residents of their households in 1935, except for Robles who had been living then in Los Angeles.

The next stop was the residence of Alva Andrus, a resident of the community since 1926, and a 49-year old native of Nebraska with an eighth-grade education.  Andrus, living with his Indiana-born wife, Gayle, who only went to school through the fourth-grade, and their 14-year old son who was in eighth grade, did not have a job, though he'd been a laborer ten years before.

Following were two families who were connected.  Archie McCoy, a 47-year old from New York, who'd been the college for a a year, lived his wife, two sons, and her father and McCoy was a oil company pumper.  One of his sons, both of whom had some college education, was a car loader for an automobile company.  Next to them was Nellie McCoy, presumably a sister-in-law of Archie's, and her son, Leo.  The two had been in Anaheim in 1935, while Archie and his family were in the Old Mission community then.  Leo was a truck driver for the "CCC," which stands for the California Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that is still around and doing important public works today.  Another oil worker lived nearby, toolman Luther Grisham, a 38-year old from Illinois and his wife, two daughters and son--the Grishams had also been in the same house five years earlier. 

The last two families listed on Rosemead Boulevard were that of building construction laborer Andrew Nunez, a 29-year old native of Mexico, his wife Ignacia, their two girls and one boy, and Nunez' fater Esteban or Steven and Joseph Lara, a 21-year old farmer and California native, residing with his wife, Mary, and their ten-month old daughter.  Both Nunez, whose family had been in Los Angeles in 1935, and Lara, who was in the same house as five years before, had finished the eighth grade.

From here, enmerator West turned east and went up Durfee Avenue.  His first family encountered was farm hand Eusebio Pérez, a 44-year old California native, his 23-year old wife, and two sons and a daughter, ranging from ages 12 to 18.  Clearly Pérez had been married before and the children came from that first marriage.  He had a sixth-grade education and two of his three children were in school, though the oldest, son Manuel, was also a farm worker.  The family had been in their residence in 1935.

Two more oil-industry families followed.  Truman Goodenough (these names usually pronounced Good-now) was an oil pumper and still working in a dangerous profession at age 69.  The Pennsylvania native (this is where the American oil industry began in the late 1850s), who finished eighth grade, lived with his 57-year old wife, Mary.  Next to them was an oil field foreman at only age 22, Robert Cain, who was a high school graduate and also from Pennsylvania and living with his 21-year old wife, Ruth, who a rare female worker, she being a typist for an insurance company.  Both families had been in their houses in 1935.

Then, there was 48-year old Michigan-born Don Renwick, who migrated from Los Angeles within the last five years.  Renwick, who had an eighth-grade education, was a foreman for a road construction crew, and he lived with his wife and namesake son.

The only Japanese family in the community was that of farmer Tokusuki Asato, age 63, and a widower and his three sons and one daughter, all born in California, and two of the sons working for their father.  Asato had no education, but his two oldest sons had finished high school and his younger two were still in high school.  The family was in the same residence they occupied in 1935.

Next to the Asatos were two additional oil workers, both working as pumpers on wells.  These were 52-year old Edward Rush, a Tennessee-native with an eighth grade education and William Bugbee, a Canadian (as was his wife) who was still working at age 72.  These men had also lived in their homes five years before.

West then counted families on Siphon Road, which still exists as a non-public roadway and which was historically an extension of San Gabriel Boulevard, being called in earlier days, Temple Road, for the prominent ranching family that once lived in the neighborhood.  Here, on Siphon, was another aged worker,  74-year old Jesús Estrada, a native of California, who only went to school through the second grade and who was employed as a farm caretaker.   He'd been in the same house the preceding half-decade, as well. 

Of the several Italian families who had been in the community for several decades, one was Baptista Ciocca, a 65-year old native of the old country, living with his wife, also from Italy, and their two sons and two daughters.  The Ciocca's were among the few homeowners, living in a $7000 residence, and also were distinguished by having three children who had been to college, with the youngest still in high school.  Ciocca, as in 1930, had no listed occupation, evidently having enough money to be retired and was in the same house as in 1935.

Bernard Normann, listed as a farmer, but as a walnut grower in 1930, was living in a modest $1000 home that he owned along with his two sons in their early 20s.  Normann, born in Illinois and aged 50, had an eighth grade education, but while his older son, a pipe factory worker, finished high school, his youngest was a rare college graduate and was working as a commercial artist.  The Normann's obviously had not gone anywhere in the preceding five years.

The remaining five households were all renters.  27-year old California native Donald Farmer was not that, but, instead was a gas company crewman, who went as far as eighth grade in school.  His Texan-born 18 year old wife, Thelma, completed two years of high school.  Wilber Nutt was a poultry farmer and was a 25-year old California native, living with his wife Sybil, who was from Illinois and was a rare woman with some college education, probably junior college.   The couple had a three year old daughter and, as with the Farmers, were living in the same residence as in 1935.

Two others on Siphon Road were 35-year old Jack Fickert, a Modesto, California transplant, who had one year of high school education and was employed as an oil well pumper.  Next to him, was a 49-year old Oklahoma-born widow, Lilly Capehart, who had moved from her home state within the last five years and was a restaurant manager, though probably not in the Old Mission neighborhood.

Finally, the last family counted in the census in Misión Vieja was that of John Briano, whose father settled as a winemaker in the community during the 1890s.  John, age 41 and a high school graduate, was running a retail liquor store and lived with his wife Freda and their three teenage children, one of whom was in college.

What the 1940 census shows is that the population of Old Mission was continuing to decline with there being just over 100 persons in the community.  Many were farmers there, others worked on the remaining oil wells which were part of the Montebello Oil Fields, and some had jobs that took them outside their community.   Within the next couple of decades, most of the community would be declared a flood zone by the federal government and the affected residents were forced to leave as the Whittier Narrows Dam was built.  The 1950 census won't be available until 2022, so it will be quite a while until the next examination of the community can be made.

Contribution by Paul R. Spitzzeri, Assistant Director, Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.