Robidoux's name leads me to recur to early judges and to his identification with the first Court of Sessions here, when there was such a sparseness even of rancherías. Robidoux then lived on his Jurupa domain, and not having been at the meeting of township justices which selected himself and Judge Scott to sit on the bench, and enjoying but infrequent communication with the more peopled districts of Southern California, he knew nothing of the outcome of the election until sometime after it had been called. More than this, Judge Robidoux never actually participated in a sitting of the Court of Sessions until four or five weeks after it had been almost daily transacting business!
Speaking of ranches, and of the Jurupa in particular, I may here reprint an advertisement—a miniature tree and a house heading the following announcement in the Southern Californian of June 20th, 1855:
The Subscriber, being anxious to get away from Swindlers, offers for sale one of the very finest ranchos, or tracts of land, that is to be found in California, known as the Rancho de Jurupa, Santa Ana River, in the County of San Bernardino.
Bernardo Yorba was another great landowner; and I am sure that, in the day of his glory, he might have traveled fifty to sixty miles in a straight line, touching none but his own possessions. His ranches, on one of which Pio Pico hid from Santiago Arguello, were delightfully located where now stand such places as Anaheim, Orange, Santa Ana, Westminster, Garden Grove and other towns in Orange County—then a part of Los Angeles County.
This leads me to describe a shrewd trick. Schlesinger & Sherwinsky, traders in general merchandise in 1853, when they bought a wagon in San Francisco, brought it here by steamer, loaded it with various attractive wares, took it out to good-natured and easy-going Bernardo Yorba, and wheedled the well-known ranchero into purchasing not only the contents, but the wagon, horses and harness as well. Indeed, their ingenuity was so well rewarded, that soon after this first lucky hit, they repeated their success, to the discomfiture of their competitors; and if I am not mistaken, they performed the same operation on the old don several times.
The Verdugo family had an extensive acreage where such towns as Glendale now enjoy the benefit of recent suburban development, Governor Pedro Fages having granted, as early as 1784, some thirty-six thousand acres to Don José María Verdugo, which grant was reaffirmed in 1798, thereby affording the basis of a patent issued in 1882, to Julio Verdugo et al, although Verdugo died in 1858. To this Verdugo rancho, Frémont sent Jesus Pico—the Mexican guide whose life he had spared, as he was about to be executed at San Luis Obispo—to talk with the Californians and to persuade them to deal with Frémont instead of Stockton; and there on February 21st, 1845, Micheltorena and Castro met. Near there also, still later, the celebrated Casa Verdugo entertained for many years the epicures of Southern California, becoming one of the best-known restaurants for Spanish dishes in the State. Little by little, the Verdugo family lost all their property, partly through their refusal or inability to pay taxes; so that by the second decade of the Twentieth Century the surviving representatives, including Victoriano and Guillermo Verdugo, were reduced to poverty.[15]
Recalling Verdugo and his San Rafael Ranch let me add that he had thirteen sons, all of whom frequently accompanied their father to town, especially on election day. On those occasions, J. Lancaster Brent, whose political influence with the old man was supreme, took the Verdugo party in hand and distributed, through the father, fourteen election tickets, on which were impressed the names of Brent's candidates.
Manuel Garfias, County Treasurer a couple of years before I came, was another land-baron, owning in his own name some thirteen or fourteen thousand acres of the San Pasqual Ranch. There, among the picturesque hills and valleys where both Pico and Flores had military camps, now flourish the cities of Pasadena and South Pasadena, which include the land where stood the first house erected on the ranch. It is my impression that beautiful Altadena is also on this land.
Ricardo Vejar, another magnate, had an interest in a wide area of rich territory known as the San José Ranch. Not less than twenty-two thousand acres made up this rancho which, as early as 1837, had been granted by Governor Alvarado to Vejar and Ygnácio Palomares who died on November 25th, 1864. Two or three years later, Luis Arenas joined the two, and Alvarado renewed his grant, tacking on a league or two of San José land lying to the West and nearer the San Gabriel mountains. Arenas, in time, disposed of his interest to Henry Dalton; and Dalton joined Vejar in applying to the courts for a partitioning of the estate. This division was ordered by the Spanish Alcalde six or seven years before my arrival; but Palomares still objected to the decision, and the matter dragged along in the tribunals many years, the decree finally being set aside by the Court. Vejar, who had been assessed in 1851 for thirty-four thousand dollars' worth of personal property, sold his share of the estate for twenty-nine thousand dollars, in the spring of 1874. It is a curious fact that not until the San José rancho had been so cut up that it was not easy to trace it back to the original grantees, did the authorities at Washington finally issue a patent to Dalton, Palomares and Vejar for the twenty-two thousand acres which originally made up the ranch.
The Machados, of whom there were several brothers—Don Agustin, who died on May 17th, 1865, being the head of the family—had title to nearly fourteen thousand acres. Their ranch, originally granted to Don Ygnácio Machado in 1839 and patented in 1873, was known as La Ballona and extended from the city limits to the ocean; and there, among other stock, in 1860, were more than two thousand head of cattle.