USA > California > Los Angeles County > History of Pomona Valley, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the valley who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 2
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Sitting long upon their horses and drinking in the beauty of this picture, the hearts of these Spaniards must have thrilled as they thought, "All this fair land belonged to Spain-to new Spain now ; and this Province of California, their native land-was there ever a fairer land than this?" Yet for nearly three hundred years, since that Sunday in August, 1542, when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Bay and took possession of this whole land in the name of Spain, no one had ever claimed this valley as his very own. The Indian tribes had hunted and fought upon it, had built their jacales by its streams, had used it all as they needed, even as they drank the water and breathed the air, with never a thought of ownership. For over sixty years the flocks and herds of the San Gabriel Mission had grazed over the valley, yet neither church nor padre held any grant or title to its acres. So the resolve of these caballeros was strengthened, their choice determined. They would petition their friend the Commissioner Alvarado for a grant of land here in this valley and over these hills. This desert land to the northeast covered with chaparral they did not want, but all the rest-east, south and west-no better pasture land, they thought, could be found in all the world. And so it was, and their own herds and flocks were soon to multiply here on these plains ; but little did they realize how fields of grain and alfalfa would replace the pasture lands; and still less did they dream that the waste of desert under the purple haze toward the mountains would some day be all clothed with green groves of orange and lemon, and that the raising of stock for hides and tallow and the growing of barley and wheat for grain would soon be supplanted by an industry far surpassing these and entirely transforming the valley, even as the new race should bring a new civilization to displace the old.
In due time the petition of Palomares and Vejar was granted. They were given two square leagues of land which they might lay off in the valley east of El Monte and lying to the west of the arroyo which runs south from the San Antonio Canyon. Their dream was to come true, their ambitions to be realized. They would build their homes beside the stream in the beautiful valley south
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of the great mountains, and their sheep and cattle would range the broad plains below. They would go out with their families and take possession; they would mark off the boundaries and select their homesites. And it should be no ordinary occasion, for it was the beginning of a new life for them and all their families; the priest would go with them and bless their undertakings. So a day was selected and the little party rode out, first to the Mission San Gabriel, where Padre Zalvideo joined them, and then on to the valley of promise.
In the establishment of the Missions and during the earlier decades of their work, neither the Franciscans, under whose order they were planted, nor the Spanish government, had encouraged the building of towns nor the planting of large private estates which would be removed from the immediate control of Church or State. The plans of José Galvez had contemplated two objectives : the christianizing of the Indians and the gathering of revenue for the Crown. Colonization in its broader sense was no part of the scheme. The Missions with their thousands of native neophytes, the communities clustered about them, and the great estates tributary to them, embodied the activity and service of the Church and were the fulfilment of its ambitions.
The presidios of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego were the head- quarters of the military forces of the government. From these stations as centers fared forth the little guards set to defend the Missions from the attacks of savage tribes or to repel the invasions of private adventurers or of forces from other nations hostile to Spain. But a new order was at hand. Already the life of the pueblo and the rancho had begun.
On the great ranchos of California granted by the Crown considerable com- munities were growing up around their powerful Spanish owners. As these grants became more numerous the Church desired to include them also within the reach of its ministrations. Under the new government of California as a depart- ment of Mexico the power of the Missions was greatly curtailed and larger tributes were exacted by the civil authorities. Hence the padres of San Gabriel were glad now to encourage the settlement of good Catholics in their territory, and it was in accord with this general policy of the order that they were quite willing to foster this new enterprise of Palomares and Vejar.
Besides these caballeros and their wives, Padre Zalvideo doubtless brought a small band of neophytes to take part in the simple but formal service of dedica- tion which he was to conduct, as well as to assist in the work that would be necessary at the first.
Arrived again at the spot where the men had camped before, when they chose this part of the valley for their claims, the party gathered under a large oak* for the service, and Padre Zalvideo offered a mass of thanksgiving and pronounced his benediction upon the families and their new possessions. The day which they had chosen for the occasion was March 19, the festival of San José, for which reason the new grant was dedicated by Padre Zalvideo as the Rancho de San José.
It was agreed between the men that the rancho should be held by them both, as an undivided property, but that Ygnacio Palomares should have for his use the northern part, called San José de Ariba, while Ricardo Vejar should take the southern half, called San José de Abajo. So Señor Palomares and his wife chose for the site of their home the place east of the San José Hills whereon their adobe was later built. The location is between the two adobes on "Cactus
* This oak still stands, a fine old tree, in the Ganesha Park tract, Pomona.
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Lodge," now owned by the Nichols families, but the building is entirely removed, as will be mentioned later. Señor Vejar selected his homesite by the southern hills farther down the valley, east of the home place of Louis Phillips, another beautiful spot by the Arroyo Pedregoso.
Then to determine the boundaries of the rancho so that they might send to the Commissioner the description to be used in the official grant, landmarks were selected as corners of the ranch so as to include, as nearly as they could judge, the two square leagues allowed them, and the distances were measured off. No accurate survey was then possible or required. This is the way it was done as described by Dou Ramon, son of this early Señor Ricardo Vejar: Starting at one of the corner landmarks, two men on horseback rode toward one of the other corners, each carrying a long staff or pole to which was fastened one end of a reata of perhaps a hundred varas'* length. One held his staff to the ground while the other galloped to the end of the reata and drove his staff into the ground. Then the first, coiling up the reata as he rode, overtook the other and, paying out the rope, galloped on another length, drove his staff in turn into the ground and waited till the other end was carried forward and set. So they rode, passing and repassing each other at a gallop, till the course was run.
And this, translated, was the description of the boundaries of the rancho :
"Commencing at the foot of a Black Willow tree which was taken for a corner, and between the limbs of which a dry stick was placed in the form of a cross, thence from the east toward the west 9,700 varas to the foot of the hills called 'Las Lomas de la Puente' (the Puente Hills), taking for a landmark a large walnut tree on the slope of a small hill on the side of the road which passes from the San José to La Puente, making a cut (caladura) on one of its limbs with a hatchet, thence in a direction about from south to north 10,400 varas to the arroyo (creek) of San José opposite a high hill where a large oak was taken as a boundary in which was fixed the head of a beef, and some of its limbs chopped, thence in a direction about from west to east 10,600 varas to the arroyo of San Antonio, taking for a corner stone cottonwood trees which are near each other, making crosses on the back, thence about from north to south 9,700 varas to the foot of the Black Willow, the place of beginning."
The first corner, marked by the "Black Willow," which, by the way, is no longer standing, is near the point known later as "Station S. J. No. 1," at the southeast corner of the San José Ranch, in Section 8, Township 2 S., R. 8 W., S. B. M., close to the corner between Sections 4, 5, 8 and 9, T. 2 S. The second corner, whose landmark was the "Black Walnut," was known later as "Station S. J. No. 9," and is in the town of Spadra, near the southwest corner of the Rubottom lot. The "large oak in which was fixed the head of a beef" was perliaps the "Encina de la Tinaja," or-Tinaja Oak, at the Station S. J. No. 10, in Charter Oak. The corner of the cottonwood trees cannot be exactly located, but is probably well to the north of the present northeast corner of the rancho, in Section 10, Township 1 S., R. 8 W., S. B. M.
As other grants were made adjoining the Rancho San José, it became neces- sary, of course, to fix the corners and determine the boundaries with greater care. Fifteen years later, after California had become a state in the Union, and Congress had passed an act under which the title in private claims based upon the old Mexican grants might be settled, in the petition of Ygnacio Palomares to settle his claim of title to a share in the Rancho San José, we find quite a different
* The vara is a Spanish unit of measure equal to about thirty-three inches.
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description. The first course, westward from the southeast corner, is broken into two, and a fifth corner set at "S. J. No. 5," so as to include the springs in the S. E. quarter of section 1, T. 2 S., R. 9 W., S. B. M. The distances and directions are more definitely specified and the course along the Arroyo San Antonio is lengthened from 9,700 varas to 11,700 varas, northward. This description reads as follows: "Beginning at a point where the Arroyo de San Antonio passes out of the mountain where is fixed a landmark at the point C on said map,* thence running south 19º West 11,700 varas to a landmark L in said map, thence West 13º North 5,730 varas to a landmark marked Y on said map; thence West 34º 15' South1 4,115 varas to a landmark marked H on said map; thence North 32º 15' East 6,525 varas to a place on the mountain where is a landmark at the point marked X on said map, thence along the mountain, so as to take in the Cañadas, to the place of beginning at the point marked C, containing about two square leagues of land more or less."
This first grant ceding to Ygnacio Palomares and Ricardo Vejar "the place called 'San José' " was dated "the 15th day of April A. D. 1837" and was issued by Juan B. Alvarado, then Governor ad interim of California. By the time the official document reached the grantees, their vaqueros had driven their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep to the new pastures, corrals had been built for them by the streams, and the adobe blocks for their houses were baking in the sun. Other houses followed - houses for the vaqueros and helpers, storehouses for hides, for wool, and dried meats.
Soon the two partners, Palomares and Vejar, were joined by a third. Luis Arenas, a native of Sonora, Mexico, who had married Josefa Palomares, a sister of Ygnacio, was taken into the company and a petition was sent to the governor for a third square league of land adjoining the rancho on the west. Acceding to this petition, Juan B. Alvarado, then "Constitutional Governor of the Depart- ment of California," issued a second grant dated March 14, 1840, "in favor of Ygnacio Palomares, Ricardo Bejar and Luis Arenas for the lands called San José ceded by decree of the 15th of April, 1837, and one additional league of grasing land." Thus the original grant of two square leagues was confirmed and another league added, the three partners having each an undivided third share in the three square leagues.
Turning again to the early documents we find this description of this third square league of the second grant :
"The second tract of land, or addition of one league, being bounded or described in the testimonial of juridical possession in this case, as follows, to wit: Commencing on the ancient western boundary of San José at the foot of an oak, which is an old landmark from which the line was run from east to west 5,000 varas to a point of a small hill which was taken for a corner, this angle adjoining the Puente, thence from south to north 5,000 varas to the foot of a small red hill called 'La Loma de San Felipe' where a mark was made, thence from west to east 5,000 varas to the old boundary of San José ; provided that the additional tract is confirmed to the extent of one league only within the boundaries described . in juridical possession."
* The reference is to "a map or diagram annexed to the testimonial showing a partition of the place called San José between Ricardo Vejar, Henry Dalton and the said Ygnacio Palomares, which map and testimonial are filed by the said Ricardo Vejar in Case No. 388 before the Commissioner." [Extract from the document by the Board of Land Commissioners, dated January 31, 1854, confirming the claim of Ygnacio Palomares to an undivided third part of the Rancho San José.] The point of beginning is now the northeast corner of the Rancho, instead of the southeast corner as before.
. "This is evidently an error, the bearing probably being West 34° 15' North instead of West 34º 15' South.
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The description of this "addition to the Rancho San José" is very vague, and may be disregarded, since it is all included in later surveys as a part of the "Rancho San José"; it should not be confused with the "San José Addition" (called for a time the "Addition to the Addition"), which tract was secured in the following manner :
Apparently Arenas was not satisfied with his third interest in the Rancho San José and its enlargement, but petitioned for still another league for himself alone. In this petition he was seconded by Antonio Lugo; for Arenas at first had camped on the moist bottom lands of the Chino, and had watered his cattle here. Here also came some of Lugo's herds to drink. So Don Antonio had persuaded Arenas to petition for more land west of the San José and leave him free in his petition for the Chino. The petition of Arenas was allowed in a third grant, dated November 8, 1841, by Manuel Jimeno, then "First Proprietary member of the most excellent Departmental Assembly in exercise of the Government of the same" (i.e., the Department of the Californias).
CHAPTER TWO
LIFE ON THE RANCHOS IN THE FORTIES
OCCUPATION OF THE RANCHO BY PALOMARES AND VEJAR FAMILIES-HOME LIFE IN THE HACIENDAS-THE MISSION OF SAN GABRIEL-BRANCH MISSION AT SAN BERNARDINO-INDIANS OF THE VALLEY-STORY OF BURIED TREASURE -- GRANTS ADJOINING THE RANCHO SAN JOSÉ-HENRY DALTON AND AZUSA- DON ANTONIO LUGO AND THE CHINO-LA PUENTE RANCHO, THE ROWLANDS AND WORKMANS-DESCRIPTION AND PARTITION OF THE RANCHO SAN JOSÉ- CONNECTIONS WITH THE WORLD OUTSIDE-THE WAR OF 1846-BATTLE OF THE CHINO RANCH HOUSE-THE GOLD FEVER.
After the adobe houses of Palomares and Vejar had been completed, and those of their overseers and vaqueros, after the stock had been driven to the rancho and pastured there, after the corn and potatoes, the beans and peppers and other necessaries of life had been planted and brought to harvest-when all was in readiness, the men transferred their families to the new homes. There had been various journeys to Los Angeles before, for stock and seed, for building materials, lumber, doors and windows, tools and other hardware. Everything that was needed for the simple construction of their adobe houses had been brought from Los Angeles, then a pueblo of two or three hundred Mexican population. Now came the household goods, some on pack animals and some in carretas drawn by oxen. In this fashion too came Doña Maria Soto de Vejar, wife of Ricardo Vejar, and Doña Concepcion Lopez de Palomares, wife of Ygnacio Palomares, with their children. Primitive as it was, the carreta was the most luxurious vehicle of the time.
This carreta was a two-wheeled cart, whose wheels were made either of a single block of wood or of solid planks placed edge to edge to make a piece broad enough to saw out a circular disk three or four feet in diameter. These turned upon a heavy wooden axle, six or eight inches thick, to which was fastened and braced the long log, or trunk of a small tree, which reached forward to serve as the tongue. Upon these two logs, the tongue and the axle, with no intervening springs, rested the floor of the cart, four or five feet wide and seven or eight feet long, made of heavy boards or logs hewn flat and framed together by end pieces which, like the edges, were extra thick. Driven into this frame were upright sticks framed together at the top to make sides and ends resembling a hay wagon, rising two or three feet above the bottom. The oxen were fastened to the tongue by reatas or hair ropes bound to their horns, and mounted riders guided them with garrochas, or goads, and shouts. Women and children rode in these carretas, seated on a blanket or hide, or squatting on the floor. The appearance of a carreta on the Camino Real was as much of a novelty then as an airplane in the sky today, and a ride in one almost as rare. Moreover the loud shouting of the drivers and the screams of laughter (and pain?) from the passengers, as they jounced and bounced along over the rough road, together with the piercing squeak of the
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wheels, despite frequent oiling with soap, would proclaim quite as effectively their approach. Nor were the elements of excitement and danger wanting; for an ox would sometimes pull to one side and overturn the load, or an axle would break, or the wheels would bog to the axle in the adobe mud.
At first the life of the rancho centered about these two homes of Palomares and Vejar, and these soon became extensive estates. By and by other homes were established by friends and relatives of the grandees, who had come out from San Gabriel or Los Angeles from time to time to enjoy the liberal hos- pitality of the rancho. Without the formality at first of deed or lease these were given locations at various places on the ranch, where springs and trees afforded water and shade. So came the Arenas, the Alvarado and the Lopez families, the Garcias and the Yorbas.
Here on the San José Rancho, the life on these large estates was much the same as it was on other ranchos of that day in California. Other writers have found in this life the theme and the setting for adventure and romance, which, while bringing fame to the authors themselves, have enriched our literature and stored our minds with vivid and lasting pictures of the Mexican life in those halcyon days.
Helen Hunt Jackson in "Ramona," Helen Elliot Bandini, in her "History of California," Marah Ryan in "The Soul of Rafael," and also Bancroft in his "Cali- fornia Pastoral," are among those whose graphic descriptions of these scenes are most familiar and correct. McGroarty in his "California, its History and Ro- mance" says: "The life that the people lived in California in the days when Monterey was at the height of its greatness, was a life that probably can not return to California nor to any other part of the globe where a similar state of affairs has existed. *
* In the good old days when California was young- ** 'in the good old days of the King,' as it used to be said-those who sat down to the feast departed not from the house of their host the next day, nor the next week for that matter, unless they were so inclined. There was nothing concerning themselves to call them away, and the longer they remained under the roof where they gathered, the better pleased was the man who owned the roof. There will never again be seen upon this earth, perhaps, a life so ideal as that which was lived in Monterey and throughout all California in its halcyon days before the 'Gringo' came. There was room to breathe, and a man could sit on a hill top and look upon the sea anywhere. * * * The land was fat with plenty, and every door was flung wide with welcome to whomsoever might come. There was no hurry, no envy, no grief. Though you had no house of your own, it were no cause for distress. You had but to speak at the first threshold you met, ask for food and shelter for yourself and beast, and they to whom you came would answer you saying : 'Pase usted, es su casa, Señor.' (Enter, it is your house.)"
THE MISSION OF SAN GABRIEL
The Mexican rancheros were good Catholics. Notwithstanding their occu- pation with the affairs of their new life, the caring for their herds, the rodeos, and slaughters, the taking of hides and tallow to market, notwithstanding their easy, not to say lazy, manner of life, they maintained their relations with the church at the Mission, and "The Mission" meant of course the Mission at San Gabriel. On Sunday they would often drive over for the mass. When they went to the Mission store, as they sometimes did for things that might be found
SENORA CONCEPCION LOPEZ DE PALOMARES ·
DON TOMAS PALOMARES AND DOÑA MADELENA VEJAR DE PALOMARES
DON FRANCISCO PALOMARES AND DOÑA LUGARDA ALVARADO DE PALOMARES
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here instead of making the journey all the way to Los Angeles, the more devout would slip into the chapel and kneel there for prayer and meditation. On the great Church days everyone went who could ride. There were the impressive services at the chapel, formal ceremonies in which the Franciscan padres, some- times two or three of them, officiated, assisted by companies of neophytes, and accompanied by the singing of the choir of white-surpliced children. After the services there were games, cock fights and races, and there were always many old acquaintances from other ranchos as well as from those of San Gabriel and from the pueblo of Los Angeles, with whom one must visit and exchange the latest news from Monterey, from Mexico and "the States."
But many could not make the journey to the Mission. The sick ones, the aged or infirm, mothers with their little children, must stay at home on the rancho. And so at times a padre from the Mission, following the old trail from San Gabriel to San Bernardino, would tarry at their homes and minister to their needs. These occasions were rare and precious; children were baptized, a little shrine set up in some private room would be blessed, confessions were received, masses read for the sick and even for the dead. Many indeed were comforted by these long remembered visits. Among the padres who made these flying trips, says Mrs. M. C. Kennedy, "were José Sanchez, Tomasso Estenaga, and Francisco Sanchez, the last named being affectionately referred to as the brown-robed Franciscan who looked like the pictures of St. Anthony. It was Padre José Sanchez who baptized Don Ramon Vejar in the old font of hammered copper in San Gabriel Mission, although at this time the family lived in what is now Hollywood." Whether they saw the Mission often, or rarely, or as in some cases not at all, yet for all the Mission was the center of their religious life, the church itself, with its heavy buttressed walls of adobe, its red-tiled roof and its melodious bells, uniquely hung in their arched wall, was very dear to them, as it was to many others living upon other ranchos of the region; and their thoughts would turn to it more reverently indeed than would those of the more fortunate living within the sound of its bells.
This devotion to the Mission was encouraged by the Franciscan fathers. The whole valley was the field of the San Gabriel Mission, from the Sierra Madre mountain range on the north to the Temescal and serranias, or hills on the south, from the great mountains of San Bernardino and San Jacinto on the east to the shores of the Western sea. Indeed the Mission of San Gabriel, in the extent of its territory, the numbers of its converts and the value of its resources, was, in its prime, the strongest and richest of them all. "La Reina de los Missiones," Queen of the Missions, was the name by which it had come to be known.
Other Missions were more happily located and more luxuriously housed. Some of them looked out upon the Pacific like the Mission of San Carlos at Carmelo, San Francisco de Solano, San Buenaventura, San Diego, and especially Santa Barbara on its inimitable commanding site on the mountain side above the harbor. The church of Santa Barbara also far surpassed that of San Gabriel, as did of course that of San Juan Capistrano, which, as McGroarty says, was in its time the finest and handsomest church edifice in all California. The site of San Gabriel Mission, on the other hand, on the level plain beside the shallow, tule-covered river-bed, has no special beauty, nor was the change of location from the original site made with this in view. Art, literature and history have found in cther Missions more of beauty and romance and the setting of more important events. Especially was this true of San Diego. Founded by Junipero Serra in 1769, it was the pioneer church and the scene of some of the great priest's most
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