Just how or when Abel Stearns came into possession of the adjoining Alamitos I do not know; from time to time he bought this and adjacent land until he owned 200,000 acres lying between the San Gabriel and Santa Ana rivers and for a number of years he maintained large flocks and herds there. He built the present ranch house and used it for his country residence.
There were very neighborly relations between him and the Temples over on the adjoining ranch,—seven miles between houses meant little in those days. A friendly rivalry existed between them as to the relative speed of their horses and a race was an annual affair, the course being from Cerritos Hill to and around a post on the bluff where Alamitos Ave. in Long Beach now reaches the sea, four miles in all. Horse racing was a favorite sport of the time and many stories have come down to us, among them one of these Temple-Stearns affairs. The stake was a thousand head of cattle and was won by Beserero, Temple’s rather ungainly horse. On this occasion there was great rejoicing at Cerritos, celebrations and feasting that lasted all night.
But the great drouth of ’62-’64 ended these halcyon days. Temple sold the Cerritos, dying almost immediately afterward. Stearns lost the Alamitos to Michael Reese, the money lender of San Francisco. My uncle Jotham used to say that this Mr. Reese was famous for his excessive thrift and that he came to his end thereby. It seems that he wished to visit a certain cemetery that charged a five cents admission fee, and that he, in order to save his money, attempted to climb over the wall, but slipped and fell, breaking his neck.
Soon after the drouth the whole twenty-nine thousand acres of the Alamitos had been advertised for sale for $153, delinquent taxes, but no buyer appeared.
In the seventies it came on the market at a tempting price and young John Bixby, who was working for his cousin Jotham as ranch carpenter, and his wife Susan Hathaway coveted it. The wife had been in California for a number of years and had seen the process by which Jotham with help had been able to change from a small rancher to the prosperous manager and half owner of the Cerritos and urged her husband to make the attempt to do likewise. First he was to see the big Los Angeles banker, I. W. Hellman. He said he would go into this purchase if Jotham Bixby would; the latter said he would if Flint, Bixby would. They all would and so it came about the Alamitos was secured, Mr. Hellman owning one-third, J. Bixby & Co., another third and young John Bixby in as manager with the chance to earn his third.
This ranch, like the Cerritos, had been cattle range before it became sheep range; unlike the former it has continued to this day as a stock ranch, and although it is many years since there have been sheep it is well known for its cattle, horses, and mules. All the eastern portion of Long Beach, including Bixby Park, that famous center of annual state picnics, came from the Alamitos, and it was John Bixby himself who bought and planted the trees that now shelter the multitudes and afford foci for the gathering of the wandering inhabitants from each and every Iowa county. (There were sixty thousand of them at the last picnic, I have been told.)
Many people now familiar with Southern California have seen the old house surrounded by trees that is on the brow of a hill out on Anaheim Road beyond the Long Beach Municipal Golf Links. That is the old Alamitos Ranch house. When my uncle and aunt first went there to live it was almost a ruin, having fallen during the Reese period from the high estate it had known when it was the summer home of the lovely Arcadia de Bandini de Stearns. The only growing things about it were one small eucalyptus tree and one fair sized pepper tree.
The front room had been used as a calf-pen and the whole house was infested with rats. Uncle John told me that the first night they slept there the baby demanded a drink, and in his passage to the kitchen to secure one he counted sixteen of the rodents. The first improvement they made was to cover all the holes in baseboards and walls with portions of kerosene cans.
It was what grandfather called a “notable housewife” that undertook the rehabilitation of that wreck of a house. Gradually as the young couple got ahead improvements were made, each one to be rejoiced in and enthused about by the interested visiting relatives. I remember when certain doors were cut, when the windows were enlarged, when the first lawn went in, when two fuchsia bushes were brought from Los Angeles, (one of them is still in its place, bravely blossoming), and a rare yellow calla. Aunt Susan took care of the chickens, with the privilege of spending all her returns for books; great was the occasion when a big stuffed armed chair could be purchased for the young head of the family.
Little by little changes were made in the building itself, that added to both its comfort and its charm. One of the first was the building of a high tank with its cool house underneath which has served more than forty years for the storing of food; only recently a self-icing refrigerator has come to its aid. To supply this tank with water a busy ram down by the spring, over-hung with willows and decked with water hyacinths, steadily chug-chugged its days and nights away.