19
The Messy Land Problem

Under Hispanic law, land ownership had been the basis for measuring a person’s wealth and status. Actually, land in the New World theoretically belonged to the crown. The Spanish king, however, had authorized a few California land grants to deserving colonists. Later, under the Mexican colonization law of 1824, the number of these grants increased to more than 800. By the time of the American conquest, almost 14 million acres had been granted to rancheros by both Spanish and Mexican officials. A few of these claims were gargantuan; one covered 1.8 million acres.

In 1846, the last year of the Mexican era, 87 rancho grants were made by Governor Pico alone, mostly to personal friends. Although the U.S. and Mexican Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed protection and security to landowners, invading American land seekers were appalled at the sheer size of such grants. Two different legal traditions, the Spanish and the American, were about to collide. Old-time Californios suddenly came under extreme pressure to change their languid way of life. Rancheros had, perhaps for too long, clung to their silver-trimmed saddles and horsemanship. The times were changing, and swiftly.

After 1850, rancheros were stuck with herds of stunted cattle on overgrazed pastures. These animals had to be sold at prohibitively low prices because of rising costs. The rancheros also faced fierce competition from American cattle drovers who herded stronger Texas Longhorns into the new state. Land-hungry American squatters also challenged virtually any ranchero’s right to hold huge grants intact. These avaricious newcomers, oblivious to personal property rights, roamed about the countryside, moving their covered wagons onto rancho tracts, using up scarce water, as well as grazing areas as they pleased. They even rounded up unbranded stray calves and cattle and claimed ownership thereof.

Ranchos located near a creek or on a lake frontage were especially targeted by poachers. Overland cattle drovers stopped at such places to water their stock. These invading American homesteaders simply became permanent squatters. They asked what right had the Vallejos, the Argüellos, or the Swiss Captain Sutter to their seemingly regal estates of 11 or more square leagues? This, despite the fact that both Commodore Sloat’s Proclamation and the subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed the Californios their existing grantee rights.

Incoming Americans justified seizures of rancho lands by pointing out that, unlike in other areas of the United States, California had practically no arable free land that was readily available. Therefore, squatters looked upon all unused land as public property.

In 1849, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior appointed William Carey Jones, like Frémont a son-in-law of Senator Benton, to investigate California’s messy system of land grants. Jones and Frémont had lost no time buying up several ranchos, so Jones was certainly not an unbiased source. Yet, he did find the majority of existing land titles to be valid. An earlier study of these titles had been made by an army captain, Henry Wager Halleck. He had doubted the validity of claims that had been granted, especially during the late Mexican era. This had encouraged American arrivals to claim California land. Having faced overland dangers – deserts, mountains, and hostile Indians – these emigrants felt that they deserved at least some western land.

A congressional act of March 1851 created a U.S. Land Commission to examine the validity of California’s Mexican titles. Land claimants who failed to appear before the commission in San Francisco within two years would forfeit rights to their lands. These then would be considered “a part of the public domain of the United States.” The Land Commission was mostly framed by Senator Gwin, whose sympathies lay with the invading land seekers. Indian landowners were subjected to complicated legalities, especially after fraudulent claims were uncovered.

One of the most astounding frauds was perpetuated by the French trader José Limantour, who asserted that he owned 47 square leagues, around 200,000 acres, including several islands within and four square leagues adjoining San Francisco Bay. He demanded that residents pay him “quit-claims” or get off his land. Because this was regarded as blackmail, Limantour was ultimately arrested. While awaiting trial for embezzlement, he deposited a $30,000 bond. He then fled San Francisco for Mexico, forfeiting the bond, and was never again seen in California.

Meanwhile, nothing but superior force could dislodge determined squatters. Some seized vacant lots in the middle of the night, erecting flimsy shanties. On December 14, 1850, 40 armed squatters attempted to regain possession of a Sacramento lot from which one of them had been ejected. In the ensuing riot the mayor was injured. He then declared martial law and mobilized a force of 500 volunteers to face the squatters. In the hectic days that followed, Sacramento’s sheriff was killed. So were several squatters. Meanwhile, in the mining regions outside the town, a prospector could not leave his claim untended and expect to find it unoccupied upon his return. “Claim jumping” occurred precisely because notice of ownership had not been established.

In San Francisco, scarcely any land parcel was exempt from seizure by squatters. There were, in fact, “professional squatters” who hired themselves out to hold possession of coveted land. During the city’s fire of 1851, especially nervy squatters fenced in disputed lots while the ashes were still hot, ostensibly to prevent their claims from being “jumped” by newcomers!

Not all squatters were scoundrels. Some honestly believed that the grants on which they settled were not actually the legal possession of anyone else. They took on in good faith the backbreaking job of developing a plot of land. Accurate surveys of grants did not yet exist, and most original boundary marks had disappeared or become unrecognizable. For example, the original title to Rancho San José read: “A large oak was taken as a boundary, in which was placed the skull of a beef, and some of the limbs chopped.” Such primitive tract markings sometimes included burning the owner’s cattle brand onto a tree. Further confusion arose because of duplication in the names and boundaries of the earliest grants. The Californios seldom built fences, yet seldom quarreled over rancho boundaries. Land was abundant and shared by all.

As squatters increased in number, politicians eagerly sought their votes. By 1854, Governor John Bigler’s annual state message referred glowingly to squatters as “that enterprising and useful portion of our people.” The federal Land Commission to adjudicate conflicting claims stayed in session at San Francisco until 1856. During a four-year period, rancheros diligently searched their adobes for original grants issued by Mexican governors. At great cost, lawyers looked for early maps in the state surveyor general’s archives in order to confirm asserted land titles.

Desperate rancheros called neighbors and relatives to testify regarding how long they had lived on their land, for the burden of legal proof remained on the rancheros. Many of them were forced to mortgage their lands, usually at high interest rates, to pay for legal fees and expensive trips to San Francisco and Washington in order to appeal to federal officials. Making matters worse, none of the land commissioners spoke or read the Spanish language.

American attorneys charged large retainers for unraveling complicated land-title snarls that involved vaguely defined or overlapping boundaries. The partners in the early San Francisco firm of Halleck, Peachy, and Billings enriched themselves while their clients patiently waited for the results of one costly legal appeal after another. Bankers too profited from all this chaos, lending money at high interest rates to rancheros strapped for cash.

Supposedly “final” decisions of the Land Commission were, furthermore, repeatedly contested in both lower and upper courts, sometimes culminating in appeals to the United States Supreme Court. Legal delays lasted for many years. Confirmation of the patent to the San José de Gracía de Simi Rancho took 14 years. In one case a claimant had to wait 35 years before he could officially call his land his own. From 1865 to 1880, the owners of Rancho Palos Verdes underwent 78 separate lawsuits, six partition suits, a dozen suits over the ejection of squatters, and three condemnation proceedings. Some rancho titles were not “proved up” until the 1870s. Not all of the rancho owners lost their titles, despite all the hazards of offering evidence of ownership, as well as repeated appeals. Bernardo Yorba, by keeping good records, avoiding debts of any kind, and paying attention to his daily ranching business, retained title to his property.

Landowners, however, continued to experience angry squatter confrontations, including knifings and shootings outside the courts. Some rancheros spoke not one word of English and therefore could not understand the rigidity of U.S. land-title examinations. Meanwhile, politicians helped squatters to become better organized, even leading to the formation of a new Settlers’ party.

Confusion, however, continued for years over the legality of all land titles. Even pueblo land claims became subject to complicated litigation. This retarded municipal settlement of both San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco, under Spanish legal tradition, was, like every pueblo, entitled to four square leagues of land. At Los Angeles, however, its city fathers voraciously staked out claims to four leagues squared (i.e., 16 square leagues). This claim was, however, eventually whittled down.

The 1860s were especially difficult years on California’s ranchos and farms. Insolvent landowners received only temporary relief through the forced sale of land parcels. To make matters worse, a grasshopper invasion was followed by severe flooding. Then, in the middle of the decade, a drought settled on California. The year 1864 saw the worst of this bone-dry aridity. That year, 5,000 head of cattle had to be marketed at Santa Barbara for only 37 cents per animal.

During this time, the annual income of Los Angeles land baron Abel Stearns fell to only $300. Desperate rancheros did almost anything to avoid bankruptcy. They sold whole corrals of horses and sought to rent out their remaining animals for plowing. Proud rancheros were reduced to cutting up cordwood for sale in nearby towns. As if all this misfortune were not enough, livestock in the state began to suffer from a deadly new cattle disease – anthrax.

California’s colorful rancho tradition – that “Arcadia” so celebrated by today’s chambers of commerce – could not withstand overwhelming Americanization. Not only did more efficient agricultural techniques replace past rancho methods, but an entire way of life quickly retreated into history.

Selected Readings

Regarding the land problem, see W. W. Robinson, Land in California (1948) and Robinson, Ranchos Become Cities (1939). Paul Wallace Gates has written the following key articles: “Adjudication of Spanish-Mexican Land Claims in California,” Huntington Library Quarterly 21 (May 1958), 213–236; “Pre-Henry George Land Warfare in California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 46 (June 1967), 121–148; “The Fremont-Jones Scramble for California Land Claims,” Southern California Quarterly 56 (Spring 1974), 13–44; and “Carpetbaggers Join the Rush for California Land,” California Historical Quarterly 56 (Summer 1977), 98–127. Other Gates essays are handily reprinted in his California Ranchos and Farms (1967).
Three land authorities were William W. Gwin, Private Land Titles in the State of California (1851), John Currey, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Private Land Claims (1891), and William Carey Jones, Report on the Subject of Land Titles in California (1850). The philosopher Josiah Royce, concerned about land abuses, wrote California from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (1886, repr. 1948). Also see Henry George, Our Land and Land Policy: National and State (1871). Though this book is dated, it remains an important source.
A novel of conflict, reflective of land differences between Hispanic and U.S. law, is Muriel Elwood, Against the Tide (1950). Similar in theme is William McDonald, California Caballero (1936). See also Charles Outland, Sespe Gunsmoke: An Epic Case of Ranchers versus Squatters (1991).
Also see Gordon Bakken, “Mexican and American Land Policy: A Conflict of Cultures,” Southern California Quarterly 75 (Fall, 1993), 237–262 and Bakken, “Rancho Cañon de Santa Ana,” in Kenneth Pauley, ed., Rancho Days in Southern California (1997), 207–223; also Donald Pisani, “Squatter Law in California, 1850–1858,” Western Historical Quarterly 25 (Number 3), 277–310. Finally, consult Paul Gray, Forster vs. Pico: The Struggle for the Rancho Santa Margarita (1998) and William David Estrada, The Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space (2008).