by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The weather was fine (especially compared to the searing temperatures of last weekend) as we hosted the first day of the Doors Open California 2024 program managed by the California Preservation Foundation—and for which a $20 fee gets access to many sites during the rest of September—and focused on our El Campo Santo Cemetery and Don Pío Pico and his wife Doña María Ygnacia Alvarado, who have been buried there for a little over a century after their reinterment from the Old Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.
We’ll be back again tomorrow at Noon, 1, 2 and 3 p.m. to offer a slide presentation on the couple, the cemetery and the Workman and Temple family, as well as a visit to what the latter sometimes called the “Little Acre of God,” an usual private cemetery with plenty of interesting stories to be shared. More on that in October and an upcoming program related to the burial ground . . .
This post offers some more history of Don Pío at the end of his long, varied and memorable life, which spanned near the entirety of the 19th century, as he was born on 5 May 1801 at the Mission San Gabriel, the son of a Spanish soldier and a housewife, rose to be a rancher of tens of thousands of acres of land, a member of the legislature in the Mexican department of Alta California, the last governor of the Mexican era before the seizure by the United States in the Mexican-American War, and a developer of two important buildings in Los Angeles, in 1868 and 1870, during the early stages of its first boom.
While Pico was among a small group of Spanish-speaking Californios who retained a measure of wealth during the first decades of the American period, his investment in the Pico Building (in which was housed the bank of Hellman, Temple and Company and then Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank) and, especially, his grand Pico House hotel, meant to keep the historic Plaza economically viable did not meet the aims intended.
Moreover, Don Pío was involved in a great deal of litigation, costing him substantial sums in legal fees while the aggregate result did not work in his financial favor, including suits against lessees running the hotel. There was, however, a flat-out swindle committed against him when Pico thought he was borrowing from Bernard Cohn, using his Rancho Paso de Bartolo and his beloved house, El Ranchito, located in what became Whittier adjacent to the former ranches of his compadres, William Workman and F.P.F. Temple.
While Pico remitted $65,000 to Cohn to satisfy the terms of what he assumed was a loan, Cohn insisted that the document signed by the ex-governor, who neither read or spoke English and, consequently, relied on translators like, in this case, Francisco P. (Pancho) Johnson, Pico sued and the matter dragged through the courts for years. In 1891, however, the California Supreme Court ruled for Cohn, who’d died in the interim and whose heirs then evicted, the 90-year old Don Pío from his residence.
Reportedly, his first stop on the way to Los Angeles to reside was at the Temple Homestead, just a few miles north from El Ranchito. Workman’s daughter and Temple’s spouse, Margarita Temple, and her younger children, including Walter, then about 22 years old, welcomed their friend for a short stay. Shared with visitors today in our Gallery and, since 2021, residing in a recreated late 19th century period room in the Workman House, are an armchair and footstool that have been said (not authenticated or documented) to have been gifts from Pico to the Temples for their friendship and hospitality.
Don Pío lived in several locations during his last three years of life in Los Angeles, including next door to another long-time Anglo friend, Jonathan Trumbull (Juan José) Warner, a resident of the Angel City on and off since the late 1820s and who advocated for financial assistance for Pico. A post here three days ago detailed some of the activities of the ex-governor as well as projects for economic assistance to him, such as one undertaken by Eliza Otis, wife of the powerful publisher of the Los Angeles Times and which involved children sending their modest sums in touching shows of support.
In mid-March 1891, a program of horse races at Agricultural Park, which was formed some two decades prior and is now Exposition Park (where the track site is now a remarkable garden), was held and proceeds from gate receipts were to be provided for Pico. This was more than apt, as Don Pío along with his Californio compatriots, were passionate about horses, renowned for their equestrian skills and, at times, willing to bet huge sums on races. In one case, four decades before these races, Pico purportedly lost tens of thousands of dollars on a race of some nine miles on a straight course just outside of the pueblo.
The 27 January 1892 edition of the Los Angeles Express included a notable proposal, not adopted, in which it was suggested, in a fictional old timer persona, that a space on the grounds of the county courthouse, situated at Temple and New High streets, could be used to honor Don Pío:
‘Pears [Appears] to me those [Los Angeles County Board of] Supervisors should do the handsome thing by Don Pio Pico—by putting a monument there in honor of the old hero—especially as about the only thing we have to remind us of him when he is dead and gone—the Pico House—is in rather a “tumble down” condition and likely to be rented to those pesky Chinamen before long. Talk it up, young feller, and don’t let up on it.
It had long been the case that the area to the east of the Plaza was the city’s Chinatown and the views of many white Angelenos were obviously reflected in that comment about the hotel being rented to some of the residents of that section.
Pico was sometimes referred to as a “relic” of an old “Spanish” Los Angeles and was pointed out to the growing number of tourists visiting Los Angeles—some of them almost certainly animated by their reading of Helen Hunt Jackson’s popular novel, Ramona, in their views and expectations of what they might see in the aged survivor of days of yore. On occasion, a media account would be published about a sighting of Don Pío.
The 23 October 1891 edition of the Los Angeles Herald, for example, included the remark that “we had the pleasure of seeing ex-Governor Pio Pico on the streets yesterday” as well as the comment that, while he was in his nineties, “he looks as if he might live thirty or forty years yet.” The account continued that, “the old gentleman was a blood in his day and no more liberal patron of the turf ever lived in California.”
The article went on to state that “he once dropped $60,000 on a race on the Los Angeles course” while “horse racing, devotion to the ladies and litigation were the great penchants of Don Pio.” This latter included another lengthy court battle involving his sister’s husband, John Forster dealing with Rancho Santa Margarita, which encompassed today’s Camp Pendleton in the northern reaches of San Diego County and the financial losses that accrued to Pico—this weekend’s event is dedicated to attorney and historian Paul Bryan Gray, who wrote an award-winning account of Pico vs. Forster.
Don Pio’s name came up in the press with regard to the California State Fair of September 1892, with the Times of the first reporting that a group of seventeen locals journeyed to Sacramento with the chair of the event’s historical exhibit committee. These included Antonio Franco Coronel, a former state treasurer and who amassed a remarkable collection of artifacts related to early Los Angeles “and ten Spanish dancers, who will dance the old Mexican dances in costume” (notice the interchange of “Spanish” and “Mexican”).
Also mentioned was Carlos de la Guerra, scion of a prominent Santa Barbara family, who went with “a Mexican woman and an Indian squaw, who was captured in the [Santa Ynez] mountains near that city, after a long chase,” with the latter said to be “so wild that Don Carlos has to keep a watch on her all the time.”
Others in the group included a San Diego priest “who has seven Mexicans and Indians in his party,” while there were also “Don Pio Pico and servant,” comprising the remainder of “a merry party” (one wonders how joyful the indigenous people and Mexicans were) anticipated “to make a big hit at the fair.” On the 11th, the paper added that “a fine oil painting of Pio Pico . . . looks down upon the Los Angeles exhibit,” while the “Coronel museum” was also highlighted.
This idea of sending people of color to fairs as “exhibits” was hardly a novel concept, broadly or locally. It has been mentioned here in a prior post that Doña Eulalia Pérez de Guillen, who was reported to be 140 years old when she died in 1878, but was obviously much younger, was to be transported by train to Philadelphia to be displayed at the nation’s centennial celebration, but this precipitated a suit between two of her daughters and the scheme was abandoned.
The nation’s most important fair after the centennial was undoubtedly the Columbian World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893 (celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas) and this was very meaningful for greater Los Angeles for economic and tourist reasons. Namely, the orange, which had become the predominant agricultural product of the region, was very recently able to be shipped throughout the country through refrigerated box cars (Edwin T. Earl, who later owned the Express, was one such inventor while in his mid-Twenties.)
Enormous efforts were made by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and others to create impressive exhibits to promote the area’s agricultural might, as well as the multifold opportunities for tourists, thanks to the completion of a transcontinental railroad to the area not quite a decade before that helped unleash the Boom of the Eighties. Even though there was a major depression that burst forth in 1893, the fair, lasting from May to October, was a huge success and the exposure had manifold benefits for greater Los Angeles.
The 20 January 1893 issue of the Herald noted that a Colonel F.S. Eastman, resident of both Chicago and Los Angeles (no doubt wintering at the latter), “has taken in hand a proposition to secure the attendance at the Columbian exposition at Chicago of the venerable Don Pio Pico” who, it was assumed, “would greatly enjoy a visit to the great city of the west and the participation in the coming festivities there.”
An invitation was extended to Pico and it seemed encouraging when the Express of 27 March reported that “the World’s Fair historical department has received Governor Pio Pico’s finely embroidered wedding under garments, and a scarf [shawl] worn by his mother. The 16 July issue of the Herald commented on a “mission era exhibit” adding that it was during his period that “the Indians began to be civilized” and, among the observation of Indian artists’ work, contributions from Coronel, Joseph Wolfskill, the Historical Society of Southern California and the Times owner, Harrison Gray Otis, Pico was a contributor.
Just prior to this, however, the 92-year old showed the fire and passion that was reflected in the declaration made to his fellow Californios on the eve of the American invasion and which was partially cited in the post from a few days ago. Under the heading of “Pio Pico’s Pride,” the Herald of 8 July cited the San Francisco Call of an unidentified issue as reporting “it is not generally known that Pio Pico, the former governor of this great state, is now living in Los Angeles, a hale old man of 94 [sic] years, and that he refused point blank to attend the world’s fair at Chicago.”
The Call added that those who knew Pico from days past “as one of the gayest of the gay statesman of the good old days when money grew on trees and gold bubbled out of the ground” would be surprised at his fierce determination to forego the trip and the article specified Don Pío’s penury, though he owned much acreage in southern California. This was an exaggeration of epic proportions, however, when it claimed that “he simply owned two-thirds of what is now known as the City of the Angels.”
That poverty, it continued, was despite the fact that fair officials offered to pay all expenses and “keep him in the same style” as when he was chief executive of Alta California—it should be noted that his accommodations were, by the standards of 1893, more than modest. Still, Pico was quoted as stating through an interpreter:
No, I will not go for two good reasons. The first is because I am poor, and the second is because I do not intend to go to the big show to be one of the animals on exhibit . . . If those gringos imagine for a moment that they can take me back there and show me in a side tent at two bits a head, they are very much mistaken.
The account went on to observe that Pico “spends most of his time driving about the city” and did so “faster and bolder than nine-tenths of the younger drivers.” While his memory was faltering, “he is in perfect health, and it will not surprise his friends if he lives to be 125 years of age.” Reviewing his former palmy days of wealth and his legendary hospitality, the Call noted that his exorbitance led Don Pío to turn to money lenders so that “mortgage after mortgage plastered his broad acres” and the result, finally, was his straitened circumstances.
Still, the piece concluded, “he is the same elegant gentleman that he always was, and it was not in the noble old man to lower his pride by attending the world’s fair on the charity of strangers.” Little could it have been realized, it seems, that he had just a year left to live. We’ll pick up that thread of his remarkable tale in a few days, but, meantime, if you’re free tomorrow afternoon and want to join us for the Doors Open California program and learn more about Pico, his spouse and El Campo Santo Cemetery, we’d love to have you.