Boyle Heights at 150: “The Awakening of Paredon Blanco Under a California Sun” by Francisca López de Bilderrain, 1928, Part Two

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

Continuing with our look at a remarkable account of Paredon Blanco, the section of Los Angeles east of the Los Angeles River that became Boyle Heights—of which we are commemorating the 150th anniversary of its founding by John Lazzarovich, Isaias W. Hellman, and William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste—author Francisca López de Bilderrain, whose grandfather, Esteban, received the land by a grant from pueblo authorities in 1835, observed that “in this short article I will try to portray as truly as possible what I remember of the old home on the bluff where I was born, so I will go back to the year 1864.”

She was then eight years old and, curiously, made no mention of the terrible situation in which the Angel City was mired during the first half of the Sixties. This included roaring floods in December 1861 and January 1862 and then two successive years of blistering drought, as well as invasions of grasshoppers and the scourge of smallpox. Of course, for a child these dire problems would not weigh on the mind as much as it would have for her parents.

She observed that, standing on the eminence that gave the community its original moniker, she gazed along “that part of the valley that lay between the east side of the Los Angeles River and Paredon Blanco (White Bluff), later called Boyle Heights, now Hollenbeck Heights.” She then noted, referring to what later was called “The Flats”:

From there, I see the landscape as it looked at that happy time, entirely covered with all shades of green, from the delicate Nile to gorgeous emerald. I could tell from the distance the kinds of fruit trees each patch grew from the shade of the leaves. The vineyards were at a distance, fields of corn, wheat, barley and alfalfa gracefully waving in space. A large sugar-cane patch, with its long slender leaves glimmering in the sun (it was the species of which white sugar is made.) Nearer to the bluff were the orchards with a great variety of fruit trees, too many to enumerate.

Noting that her favorite fruits included those that she picked too early, for which she was punished, including with a dose of “the unsavory castor oil,” Doña Francisca mentioned “the immense apricot trees . . . with round, mellow, golden fruit” and which were at the left of the entrance “from the principal avenue,” possibly First Street. There was also “the delicious aroma of the peaches,” that weren’t particularly pretty or substantial, “but oh, how sweet.”

Other trees raised in the expansive orchard were almonds, apples, citrons, figs, lemons, limes, mulberries, oranges, plums, pomegranates, and walnuts. The figs were also notable as the child “ate them sitting on a high, stout branch of the tree hidden by the huge protecting leaves” with the trees planted along the zanja, or irrigating ditch, “that ran along the foot of the bluff.” In the adjoining flower garden were daisies, hollyhocks, lilacs, lilies, marigolds, roses, snowballs, verbenas and violets and, along the ditch were the Rose of Castille and some anise, flax and saffron.

Also next to the zanja were baths, one closer to the adobe dwelling and another amid the orchard and these were wood with tin linings. Ditch water filled the baths through a flood-gate “and the water from the baths filled a pool below, which was used for swimming.” A significant detail which Señora Bilderrain added to her narrative as that,

In 1850 my father [Francisco] bought two slaves, a boy and a girl, Yuma Indians, from [the River] Colorado. for five hundred dollars in horses. He brought them to our home. The girl was a very good swimmer [undoubtedly because of the river in her homeland] and taught my sister to swim. I was too small to learn. The girl is still living. She grew up to become a very fine woman, very pious, and married one of the men who worked in the orchard. I do not know what became of the boy, for he ran away when he was about twenty-five, and we never heard from him again.

In the Flats was an arroyo, or creek, which branched off from the river and bisected the tract from east to west and “made its way over the whitest sand and pebbles I have ever seen.” On either side of the watercourse were dense stands of elders, willows and other smaller trees. A second sugarcane patch at the northwest corner of the orchard, which provided molasses and coarse sugar, though it was added that the Chinese and Mexicans favored chewing on the cane for the savory juice.

Some 150 feet from the residence were the trapiches, a simple mill in which horses were driven in a circle and the cane was ground such that “the juice ran into a wooden trough, from which it was taken and put into huge kettles and cooked . . . then it was poured into round moulds . . . placed onto hard, level surfaces . . . [and then] taken out and packed for export.” Doña Francisca recalled that “sometimes we children were allowed to sit up late and wait for the syrup to cool.”

Close to the sugar mills were bamboo posts were her mother oversaw the drying of fruits and vegetables, as well as “making delicious jams, which were cleverly done up in corn husks like the tamales” and which they would keep for years. Also of note was the wild cha (possible Bidens Pilosa?) which grew in the orchards and which was placed in a charera so that “nearly all the settlers made tea from it by steeping the leaves in boiling water.”

Doña Francisca went into some detail about her mother’s recipe for preparing the leaves by steaming, rolling them when moist and then mixing them “with a certain number of dried orange blossoms, which gave the tea a delicious, aromatic flavor.” The beverage was also “valuable medicinally, being a heart sedative” and she told an interesting story of how Confederate-supporting Southerners from El Monte left, in the waning days of the Civil War and the 1864 time period in the article, and resettled north near modern Tehachapi.

When rumor claimed that men from this new settlement were determined to attack Los Angeles, Señora Bilderrain’s brother-in-law, United States Deputy Marshal William C. Warren, married to Juanita López, volunteered to go undercover as a peddler and took with him dried fruit, the husk-stored jam and “my mother’s famous cha.” He found the people in the hamlet to be friendly, though they were clear in their hatred for Republicans and Union supporters and, while Warren agreed with their views, he was a federal agent, though nothing seditious was apparently determined. Several years later, while Los Angeles city marshal, Warren was killed by a deputy in a conflict about a reward.

Returning to Paredon Blanco, Señora Bilderrain added that “about a hundred feet south of the house was a sixty foot room where wine casks containing several kinds of wine, manufactured on the premises, were kept.” Nearby was a shoemaker’s shop, with chamois leather footwear a main product and a bunkhouse, stable, corrals and dairy were to the southeast of the residence. Diary cows and pigs were in pens and there were also ducks, geese, hens and turkeys kept. North of 1st Street from about U.S. 101 to Evergreen Cemetery, “on the hills . . . grazed a band of horses and hundreds of sheep ad some goats.”

In 1863, Doña Francisca’s father sold cattle, horses and mules in San Francisco and returned with a carriage and a harness trimmed in silver with this “handsomest carriage in Southern California” costing a substantial $3,000. The writer remembered the painting on the doors, cushions of blue broadcloth, pastel silk fringe, embroidered straps on the back seat and the silver buckles and screws on the hub.

A tangential tale concerned an 1862 trip to San Francisco to join her sister and Warren, as he was sent to deposit a federal prisoner, possibly at Alcatraz Island, which was seized by the government from F.P.F. Temple, who was given it by his father-in-law William Workman, and took some time off for a vacation. It was during that trip that the photo of a young Francisca, featured in part one of this post, was taken, though she was sent home early when she contracted diphtheria.

The article came to a rather rapid conclusion with the observation that her unnamed step-grandmother, the widow of Esteban, “advertised for sale her part of the land” granted in 1835.” It was recorded that,

It happened that a new arrival in town was seeking a site suitable for a home. The new arrival was none other than the affable and jovial Irish gentleman, Mr. Andrew Boyle. He saw the land and took a fancy to it. In a short time the widow had delivered the key of the adobe home to Mr. Andrew Boyle, who soon after moved into the new home with his family, Maria, the only child, who married William [Henry] Workman, and her maiden aunt [Elizabeth Dardier, mentioned in part one].

Nothing was said about Boyle’s building a brick house, the first east of the river, on his tract within about two years. Moreover, it was recollected that, from 1862, Boyle made wine from the López vineyards and “the labels on his wine bottles bore the name of Paredon Blanco.” Five years after Boyle’s 1871 death, his son-in-law Workman “conceived the idea of subdividing a large tract of land from the bluffs eastward for settlement, which he called Boyle Heights in honor of his father-in-law.” Not mentioned was that Juanita’s second husband, Lazzarovich, and Hellman were involved in the venture.

What was stated was that Francisco López “followed suit, but the men whom he commissioned for the subdivision of his land took advantage of his honest and trusting nature, and hurled him into bankruptcy.” The 70-acre tract was called Brooklyn Heights and was north of the Boyle Heights subdivision. With that, Señora Bilderrain ended with,

And now no longer do the spreading vineyards of those colorful days lie at the foot of the white pebbled and majestic Paredon Blanco (White Bluff). Gone are the orchards, its waving fields of grain, the shops of the thrifty shoemaker, goldsmith and the pliers of other trades, who sang joyful melodies as they worked, with happy responses from innumerable singing birds. Even the topography of the lofty bluff is changed as it has been terraced for a street [Boyle Avenue].

No sign is left of my childhood home. It is now inhabited by colonies of people of all nationalities, the Russian predominating, so it is called the Russian Colony, from Summit Avenue [south of César Chávez Avenue near where U.S. 101 and Interstate 10 intersect] on the north to Third Street on the south.

Those expatriates, often called Molokans, from the decaying Russian Empire occupied the northern end of The Flats in the Aliso Village area, and it is significant that Doña Francisca specified the multi-ethnic character of Boyle Heights, which became a heavily working-class neighborhood as the central industrial core of Los Angeles was nearby, but also as restrictive covenants limiting most of the Angel City only to “Caucasians” became standardized by the time the article was published.

In 1879, Doña Francisca married Refugio Bilderrain, whose family long occupied an adobe house where North Broadway and Temple Street intersect and where the county central heating and refrigeration plan is situated now. The couple resided in the house in their early years, during which Refugio served as city assessor, later also being a tax collector and member of the city council. The Bilderrains, who had no children, long lived west of downtown and Refugio was a 30-year employee of the city water department.

As mentioned earlier, Francisca provided the information for a 1926 news article by a relative, Isabel López, and also gave recollections concerning the 1842 discovery of gold in Placerita Canyon, near modern Santa Clarita, that was California’s first, though much smaller, rush and in which F.P.F. Temple participated by selling gold dust at the national mint in Philadelphia. Her memories led to the identification of a specific oak tree that is landmarked as where her relative Francisco (not her father) López made his stunning find.

At the start of 1937, the 78-year old Francisca died (the featured photo is from an obituary) and she was followed about a year later by Refugio. It is somewhat rare and unusual to find published recollections from that era of Los Angeles history by women and, especially, Latinas. Beyond that, first-hand accounts of Paredon Blanco, the community that preceded Boyle Heights, can also be hard to find, so we can be thankful that she provided this valuable information and that the Historical Society of Southern California, formed in 1883 and still with us as it approaches its own 150th anniversary, included it in its Annual Publication for 1928.