USA > California > Land in California, the story of mission land, ranches, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip, homesteads > Part 8
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107
The Land Commission
Delay in settling survey questions-perhaps the great- est obstacle of the land claimant-caused Congress to pass the Act of June 14, 1860, under which the District Court, upon application, could order into court the survey of a private land claim, for examination and adjudication. Previously the General Land Office had handled these questions. The slow methods used by this office were responsible for the establishment of the new procedure which, though coming late, proved helpful to claimants.
The Act of 1860 not only reduced delay, but by bring- ing interested persons before the court did away with dis- putes arising from independently made and sometimes overlapping governmental surveys. Furthermore it gave assurance that the title of the patentee and of his succes- sors would be free from the claims of "third persons," mentioned in the Act of 1851. The absence of such pro- cedure earlier had resulted in litigation over conflicting claims and even over conflicting patents.
Bearing on the conclusiveness of federal patents is the Act of March 3, 1891. This act requires that suits by the United States to vacate and annul any patent already is- sued must be brought within five years from the passage of the act and, as to any patent thereafter issued, within six years after the date the patent was issued. Also in point is California's statute of limitations barring an action to recover real property unless the plaintiff or his predeces- sor has been in possession within five years before the commencement of the action. Furthermore, five years of adverse possession at any time since the passage by the California legislature of the Act of April 18, 1863, bars an action by the holder of an unconfirmed title of Spanish or Mexican origin.®
8 12 Stat. 33.
9 Statutes 1863, p. 325.
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109
The Land Commission
Historians and lawyers like to argue over the wisdom and justice of the procedure set up by the Act of 1851 to pass upon the validity of Spanish and Mexican land grants in California. The former, confronted with the injustice that resulted, feel that a simpler, quicker system for sepa- rating good titles from bad could have been established. The latter, who benefited most from long-drawn-out litigation, point out that, in the United States, courts- and not recorders or registrars-have the final word in controversies and that the vagueness and defects in Span- ish and Mexican records, titles, and surveys made inevi- table long court battles over desirable land. Lawyers like William W. Morrow have said that condemnation of the whole procedure comes only from those not familiar with the situation. Regardless of whether the Frémont, the Gwin, or any other measure was adopted, California landowners were due to have years of trouble. As proof of this statement, the attacks on land titles, always beaten off, have continued to the present day. To those com- mentators who so casually state that the United States should have "bought" all the privately owned land in California to make it part of the public domain, it is enough to say that this would have been contrary to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as well as highhanded.
Doubtless short cuts in procedure could have been adopted early in the 1850's-as was done finally in 1860- with the result that some of the ranchos might have been broken up quickly and sold at existing low prices. This would have staved off much of the later litigation, reduced squatterism, and eased the demand for cheap land-a con- tention well stated by Elisha Oscar Crosby, an attorney who handled many of the claims before the Land Com- mission.1º Such observations are easily made in retrospect.
10 Memoirs of Elisha Oscar Crosby (The Huntington Library, 1945).
CHAPTER IX
Shotgun Titles
EVERY AMERICAN is a squatter at heart-or so it seems if we think of the tide of adventurous men that began mov- ing west at the close of the Revolutionary War, men im- patient of governmental authority and as contemptuous of the rights of Indians as of wild animals, men who be- lieved land should be free as air. This tide finally reached the westernmost boundary of California.
Squatterism is as old as our country. George Washing- ton in 1784 was making entries in his diary about his ex- periences with squatters on lands he owned west of the Alleghenies. The squatter movement that began in the eastern states continued steadily west and farther west, greatly influencing the land policies of the government. It found its climax, but hardly its conclusion, when gold- hungry pioneers looked enviously and graspingly on the vast ranchos held by Californians under Mexican laws. Squatterism in California has never entirely died out, although shotguns gave way to lawyers. In recent years,
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Land in California
with California rancho titles all settled, we still find mild flare-ups of the squatter spirit, for the desire to settle upon the good lands held by another person dies hard. Who does not want to get something for nothing!
Even before California became a part of the Union- September 9, 1850-the wagons of the immigrants were moving in and coming to a stop on the good valley lands of the rancheros. Squatters began early to organize into armed bands to get what they wanted. Some were inter- ested in ranches. Some began staking out, or helping themselves to, lots on the outskirts of growing towns like San Francisco and Sacramento.
Many years were to elapse before a land commission, authorized under Act of Congress in 1851, and the courts to which its decisions could be appealed, could pass upon all of the 800 and more private land claims in California. Meanwhile adventurous American immigrants, who be- lieved-as in the popular song-that "Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm," found on their arrival that all the best land in California, or at least the most usable, was included in enormous grants made by the Mexican regime. To many of these "North American adventurers," as native Californians liked to refer to them, the great landowners were merely monopolists who, like the In- dians, were obstructing the path or progress of civiliza- tion. After all, California had been captured, as well as bought, from Mexico.
No doubt some of these newcomers brought with them the honest notion that this teritory obtained from Mexico was inevitably public land and that they, therefore, had the right to preëmpt and settle upon lands in California as freely as they had been doing upon any part of the public domain in other states. When they found the best
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areas claimed under Mexican titles or held by speculators who had bought them up, clashes were inevitable. Hardly any part of inhabited California was free from violence. The story of squatterism in California is just one chapter in the story of mob law in America.
Beginning in 1849 and 1850 swarms of squatters settled on every available spot in or about San Francisco, whether claimed or not. They fenced in the sand hills. Soldiers had to be despatched from the presidio to destroy the tents and shanties of squatters who had helped themselves to the land of the government reserve at Rincon Point, the government having just given its lease for this area to Theodore Shillaber. Union Square was fenced in by one "settler" who had to be disarmed when the street commissioner attempted to remove the fence. By mid- summer of 1853 squatters had swarmed over the land deeded by Samuel Brannan for the Odd Fellows' ceme- tery. Ten men on each side fought a battle over a lot at Mission and Third streets, two being killed and five wounded. By 1854 property owners whose titles were de- rived from the city were hiring special police to protect their lots. Squatters became bolder and entrenched themselves on a lot at the west corner of Howard and First streets. Here they planted the galley from a sailing vessel as a fortress-Fort Larkin, they called it-and defied at- tempts to expel them. Possession was regarded as the best title. There were many battles along the water front over submerged areas and "water lots" fenced in by the driving of piles.
In San Francisco, where the pueblo title to four square leagues was not to be confirmed until 1865, squatting was inevitable and perhaps logical. It even became a trade. Men squatted for themselves and for hire, and did this
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Land in California
over a twenty-year period. Squatting implements con- sisted of blankets and firearms. In the long run the city of San Francisco was forced to recognize the claims of squat- ters in certain large areas and, under the Van Nuys and later ordinances, to issue city deeds on the strength of possession. Many a real estate fortune in San Francisco, and the rise of many a prominent San Francisco family, dates from this municipal recognition of possessory rights.
Sacramento, the gold-rush city, was the scene of the most violent of the squatter riots. The original city had been laid out by John A. Sutter on part of the eleven square leagues granted him in 1841 by Mexican Governor Al- varado, the title to which later was upheld as valid by the United States. Sacramento was first a tent city, but by 1849 substantial buildings were going up. On the vacant lots owned by purchasers from Sutter several thousand immigrants had squatted, disregarding the wishes and orders of owners and city authorities. By December public meetings of squatters were being held, with speakers to harangue them in increasingly violent language. The people of Sacramento became divided into those who sided with the squatters and those-like Samuel Brannan and city officials-who were on the side of law, order, and Sutter's title. On June 21, 1850, Sutterites demolished a squatter's house and the next day raided other squatter- held lots, destroying houses and pulling down fences. On July 1 the squatters, in a meeting to raise money and to hire lawyers to fight suits brought to enforce the Sutter title, were told by Chairman Charles Robinson that every man had a sacred right to a homestead and a sacred duty to defend it. As for himself, Robinson believed it as easy to squat on 160 acres as on one acre, and as easy to defend it. James McClatchy was of Robinson's mind and at the
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next meeting-when it was announced that four lawyers had been hired-said: "Let us put up all the fences pulled down and also put up all the men who pull them down."1
On August 13 the climax was reached when McClatchy and Michael Moran were arrested and put in the prison ship. They were charged with resisting or attempting to resist the sheriff in the execution of a judgment of forcible entry and detainer by the county court against some of the squatters. The next morning thirty armed squatters, under the leadership of John Maloney marched toward the prison ship. Calling upon the citizens of Sacramento to take up arms for the defense of the laws, Mayor Harden Bigelow led an armed group of citizens to the water front. But the squatter army, led by Maloney carrying a drawn sword, made no attempt to release the prisoners on the ship. Instead, they marched up J Street, followed by a jeering, hooting crowd.
At Fourth Street the squatters halted and turned around. Mayor Bigelow and Sheriff Joseph Mckinney, riding up, told the squatters to lay down arms and sur- render. Maloney then gave the order: "Shoot the Mayor! Shoot the Mayor!" The squatters fired and their fire was returned. The Mayor fell, wounded, from his horse (and two months later was to die as an aftermath of his wound), City Assessor J. M. Woodland was killed, as were three squatters-including Maloney-and both sides counted several wounded. The battle was continued the next day when the sheriff and his party entered a saloon where eight or ten squatters were awaiting them. On both sides there were killed and wounded, among those killed being the sheriff himself.
Though this uprising at Sacramento surpassed others
1 Hittell, History of California, III, 673-674.
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in violence and was condemned throughout the state, the claims of the squatters there were not different from those of squatters elsewhere. In complete disregard of the rights of the Peralta family, squatters in 1850 rushed on Rancho San Antonio and laid out Oakland. It was many years be- fore deeds and compromises cleared Oakland's title from squatter taint. So large was the squatter population in California that politicians began bidding for their vote. Governor John Bigler, in his message to the legislature on January 4, 1854, called for legislation on their behalf and referred to the squatters as "bona-fide settlers." He believed that compensation should be given anyone who had been evicted after putting up a house on land he thought belonged to the government. He also thought the government should not charge $1.25 per acre to Cali- fornia settlers on the public domain when it was giving away land in Oregon. Finally, in 1856, the legislature passed a law providing that all lands in the state were to be regarded as public until the legal title should be shown to have passed to private parties. This extraordinary statute was held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Its passage, however, showed that squatters were a power in the land. There were squatter governors, squatter legis- lators, squatter courts, and squatter judges.
The squatter troubles of the 'fifties, 'sixties, and 'seven- ties occurred primarily because so many land titles had not yet been confirmed by the Land Commission or, if confirmed, were still in the courts on appeal or were awaiting governmental survey before a patent could be issued. Everywhere the original California rancheros, or their successors, were harassed by squatters and often impoverished by the expense of fighting claims. With an uncertain title, too, a ranchero found it hard to sell and
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Shotgun Titles
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles
THE YGNACIO MARTÍNEZ ADOBE RANCHO EL PINOLE, CONTRA COSTA COUNTY
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles
THE RAIMUNDO YORBA ADOBE RANCHO RINCÓN, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY
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Land in California
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Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles NEW ALMADEN MINING CAMP SANTA CLARA COUNTY
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles STORE AT NEW ALMADEN
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Shotgun Titles
This indenture, twenty Hind WWW Der John Temple of San Francisco in the State of California, Thecary party of the finas past and Bergrunon Flat, Thomas Flint, and Llewellyn Biely parties
Witamthe. it's the med burly of the post post for and in consideration Twenty Thousands.
se Crean brood posed by the ment for was of the wound post at is tofire the cuseating and delivery of this finals the soft minut ts trung showwhatyed, South granted, hasgained and sold. om. god ward spremnat nost ry ah e formato ' but graut. Foiquen and sell, conery and exception wald Un willproches of the most past and to the tous and ofsigns forces. I'll that tract of land activate in The lemvaly of was tregeles, State of California, Known to the monk, of don troutes and breaseded on the Fronth by The Profile Herewe, sauce on the other sevens by the handhos called San Bidas,
20
the 22d of May I. D.1834, for a more patentes descriptions of which Inference is houby make to the feature on file in the office of the U.S the docket of the Broad of 11. 8. Sau Commoment To accostan and kille private land claims in the state of California; being also the aume Varde confirmed to the party of the forest feast, by The sand Board onthe 11K. of that 1953, marc by the U. I whichach lornet our Fileseasy 28th 150/ Good olor any eight title of interest which the party of the final have may have canqueres in the hands of the afresand Medjoining hisache called san Pedro
Together with all und angular the bemesimer, hardluments and apriterances thereants belonging. vi in any mis apportoinany, and the somessen und somosins, Demaindes and wwwinden. Mats ifines and profits thereef. - And who att the excess weight lathe interest property, Jusression, chocom and demand whichare As well as tom was on equity of the said posty of the first just of in is to the where donvibed permisos sont every fast and punct thevery with the
To Have and to Hold all and singulus the above mentioned and described permises, Aigather with the appartenances, make the said justins of the second post Thise bres and afsigns forever.
In Witness ithereof, she won't party of the past prit bath hervata not his hand and
1. Temple
A. P. Auchman
JOHN TEMPLE'S CONVEYANCE OF RANCHO LOS CERRITOS, 1866
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Land in California
BODEGA COAST, BY EDWARD WESTON
TOMATO FIELD, MONTEREY COUNTY BY EDWARD WESTON
121
Shotgun Titles
OWENS VALLEY, BY EDWARD WESTON
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles FOOTHILL SCENE, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
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Land in California
Photo, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco SAN FRANCISCO WATER LOTS, 1856
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles OIL WELLS AT SUMMERLAND, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY
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Shotgun Titles
Fon axD IN Coxsingzarion of the sum of or Fourhundred un twenty #420) Dollars, to me in hand poid, I. THOMAS B. VALENTINE, of the City und County of San Francisco, and State of California, to whom the within Special Certificate of LyChtion Ff No. 169 was issued, do hereby sell and assign unto abraham Blockman
wedan Francis cu County and State of California and to his heirs and assigns forever the ani Special Certificate of Location E. No. 169 and I do hereby authorize him to locate the same and receive a Patent for the lanri xo loroter.
February Witness my hand and sent this Ejusti day of
A. D. 1875
Ilfest.
D'BTfrancis
State of California,
City und County of San Francisco. ) 88 :
Eguchi (5ch) day of
February On this A. D. eighteen hundred and seventy five before me, Nuny I. Sithey a Notary Public in and for said City and County, personally appeared THOMAS B. VALENTINE, known to me to be the person whose name is subscribed to the within Instrument, and he duty acknowledged to me that he executed the same.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my Official Seal at my office in the City and County of San Francisco, the day and year in this Certificate first above written.
TRANSFER OF VALENTINE LAND SCRIP, 1875
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Land in California
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles SAN LUIS OBISPO, ABOUT 1890
Photo, Title Insurance and Trust Company, Los Angeles
CLAREMONT AND MT. SAN ANTONIO, ABOUT 1907
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Shotgun Titles
convey even though there was a settler buyer who could well use part of a huge acreage. When valuable land was involved, such as the so-called Suscol grant in Solano and Napa counties, the rejection of the title of its claimant by the Land Commission or by the courts resulted in a rush to it by squatters. Or, when the government's survey ex- cluded valuable land from the boundaries of the area claimed-as in the case of the Sobrante grant in Contra Costa County or the Azusa de Dalton and adjoining Dal- ton grants in Los Angeles County-squatters swarmed in upon the excluded parts.
Even after a title had been perfected and the United States had issued its patent, the rancho was not always free from the harassment of squatters whose lawyers would undertake to prove that some requirement of Mexican law had not been fulfilled by original owners or that the government survey took in too much territory, and that, therefore, the land was public domain. This kind of attack-though never successful, since the Su- preme Court holds that a United States patent issued in confirmation of an earlier Spanish or Mexican title is binding and conclusive as against squatter claims-has continued, although in an ever-diminishing degree, al- most to the present time. Hence, the story of squatting is a continuous one throughout California's history, violent in its early phases, but tending toward court battles in its later phases. As the large ranchos were broken up, squat- ters found less and less to excite their cupidity, and squat- terism as a political issue eventually died out. California's titles today do not originate in squatter claims, but the pressure of squatters on government and individuals, as happened in San Francisco and Oakland, compelled com- promises that were partial victories for squatters.
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Land in California
. A check of the county histories of the state and of the volumes on local history reveals an extraordinary story of squatter violence in California throughout the 'fifties, 'sixties, and 'seventies.
In May, 1853, Jack Powers, who was a squatter on land of Nicholas Den near Santa Barbara, barricaded himself with fifteen of his friends behind logs and wagons and de- fied the sheriff's attempt to oust him. They were armed with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns and were supplied with liquor and food. In the battle that developed there were killed and wounded on both sides.
Trespassers and squatters roamed and mined at will along the creek beds of John Charles Frémont's ore-rich Mariposas grant, and when the final survey showed valu- able mines included within the rancho's boundaries, Frémont's settlement became an armed camp. Miners attempted to seize the mines they had worked. Bloodshed and riots followed.
Two hundred squatters along the Russian River near Healdsburg in Sonoma County banded together for de- fensive and aggressive action. Fifty armed men attacked a government surveyor, tore up his papers, and threatened his life if he did not stop surveying and go home. They forced one Spanish Californian landowner to release his title to certain land and to get out. They threatened to burn Healdsburg to the ground, but a rally of citizens caused the "free land" men to retire.
John Bidwell rid himself of squatters on his Rancho Chico in Butte County by buying out some of them and bringing suits of ejectment against others.
The "battle of Waterloo" took place November 9, 1861, eight miles north of Stockton at a place called Waterloo, when a squatter named John Balkwill turned
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his house into a fort and successfully defended it against the owner who attacked with a nine-pound cannon.
Thomas More, owner of Rancho Sespe-six-league rancho in the Santa Clara Valley of the present Ventura County-was murdered on March 23, 1877, by F. A. Sprague, leader of a band of seven masked men. Sprague, a former Baptist minister, was the leader of the Sespe Settlers League and had filed preëmption claim to part of the original Sespe grant. This league had warned More in the Santa Barbara and Ventura newspapers not to in- terfere with any settler upon land in the Santa Clara Val- ley between Santa Paula Creek and Piru Creek.2
Employees and tenants of Henry Dalton filed home- stead and preëmption claims on land excluded by Henry Hancock's survey of Ranchos Azusa de Dalton, San José, and Addition to San José, in Los Angeles County. A set- tlement of shacks sprang up known as Azusa Four Corners. Dalton was unable to have these settlers ejected, since the Hancock survey was the government's official survey, and endured twenty-nine years of futile legislation trying to recover the land. This legislation cost him so much that he lost the rest of his land through foreclosure.3
The most publicized conflict of squatters with the Mor- mon owners of Rancho San Bernardino was that involving "Apostate" Jerome Benson who had taken up land on the Santa Ana River which he assumed to be outside rancho boundaries. He disregarded notices that he was trespas- sing. The court decided against Benson, but Benson sur- rounded himself with friends who were anti-Mormon and fortified his place with a Fourth of July cannon. "Fort Benson" was maintained for a year but was aban-
2 Robert Cleland, The Place Called Sespe (Chicago, 1940).
& C. C. Baker, "Don Enrique Dalton of the Azusa," Historical Society of Southern California, Annual Publication, 1917.
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Land in California
doned when the government survey proved it a part of the rancho. Benson was paid the value of his improve- ments.
Mountain areas were not free from squatters nor were offshore islands. John M. James, for example, cut timber over the Crestline and Skyland region in the San Ber- nardino Mountains. Several squatters bequeathed their names to canyons in the San Gabriel Mountains. Santa Catalina Island was a favorite spot for squatters both be- fore and after Tómas Robbins received his grant from Governor Pío Pico.
With the settlement of titles and the breakup of ranchos, squatterism languished. But it took on a new lease of life and a new phase in southern California with the advent in 1897 of the Land Settlers League-some- times termed the "Land Suckers League"- headquarters in Los Angeles. Henceforth squatting was to be promoter induced. Credulous members were persuaded to join the League on the representation that the title to certain Spanish or Mexican grants could be successfully contested and the land then thrown open to settlement. They paid fifty dollars down and dues of fifty cents a month and, about two hundred of them received conditional deeds of quarter sections of land in the pleasant San Fernando Val- ley. These deeds involved several subdivisions in Rancho Ex-Mission de San Fernando, the title to which rancho had been confirmed by the Board of United States Land Commissioners in 1855 and a government patent issued in 1873.6 Only the promoters profited, for the United States Supreme Court upheld the finality of this patent."
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