The title of the Mission Fathers to the lands had not been confirmed by written grant from Carlos III, King of Spain, and the governors of California under Mexico took advantage of this to grant ranchos within the valley borders. In the northwest part Rancho San Pascual was granted to become the princely estate of Don Manuel Garfias and later the sites of Pasadena and South Pasadena. Farther east Rancho Santa Anita was created and eventually became the property of E. J. (Lucky) Baldwin. Beyond that rancho were Ranchos San Francisquito and La Puente. Along the south hills of the valley Ranchos La Merced, Potrero Grande and Potrero Chico were granted. By the severing of such large tracts of land the property of the Mission San Gabriel diminished from tens of thousands of acres to thousands of acres and then to hundreds.
In 1846 Governor Pico asked permission of his government to lease the remaining land of the Mission San Gabriel “to prevent the total ruin of the Mission.” No lessee could be found to take the land under this act and on June 18th, 1846, Pio Pico made the final grant of all the remaining Mission lands to Julian Workman and Hugo Reid. The United States government, however, refused to confirm this last minute disposal of the Mission land and declared the property public land of the United States, first setting aside to Bishop Alemany 190 acres surrounding the Mission buildings.
The public land was quickly taken up by many settlers, who were eager to acquire homesteads in a country almost exclusively made up of giant ranchos. Subsequently B. D. Wilson and J. De Barth Shorb acquired much of this land and platted the present prosperous and beautiful city of Alhambra. San Gabriel and Monterey Park also have been built on land originally within the Mission boundaries.
The 190 acres set aside for the Mission Church was the largest parcel of land received by any one Mission out of the land it had formerly held. At the height of the Mission glory in all a million and a half acres were under the control of the Padres. When California became the property of the United States twenty missions other than San Gabriel held from four to seventy-six acres each—a total for all the chain of less than 800 acres. Eight hundred acres out of the original million and a half.
Mission San Gabriel Arcangel
Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres
Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres was not in South America, as its name might indicate, but was an important rancho of Southern California. The rancho was granted by Manuel Micheltorena, Governor of the Californias, February 24, 1843, to Maximo Alanis and comprised 4,438 acres. Don Alanis died shortly after he received the grant and his heirs conveyed the rancho to Dr. Wilson W. Jones and Wm. T. B. Sanford, the former, one of Los Angeles’ first doctors and the latter, an early Los Angeles postmaster.
But the doctor knew little about ranching and in 1852 he was glad to sell his half interest in the rancho to Don Benito Wilson for $662.75, or at the rate of 35 cents an acre. Don Benito’s interests were extensive and widely separated. Jointly with Dr. Griffin he operated Rancho San Pascual northeast of the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Jointly with Phineas Banning he founded and developed the city of Wilmington at the port of San Pedro, and west of the pueblo, halfway to the ocean, with Sanford, the Postmaster, he raised cattle on Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres. Between supervising trips to his ranchos and to the harbor he found time to maintain a home in the Pueblo of Los Angeles—so large that after he moved it was used for an orphan asylum—buy much city property, ship wine to San Francisco and foster the development of the orange.
In 1858 B. D. Wilson bought the interest of Sanford in this and other property for $16,000 and subsequently sold the rancho. In 1884 John Wolfskill of the prominent family of that name purchased the rancho for $40,000. The purchase by Wolfskill was very timely as the completion of the Santa Fe Railroad two years later sent land prices skyrocketing and in 1887 he entered into an agreement to dispose of the rancho for $438,700, or more than ten times what he had paid for the land in 1884.