The Rancho Santa Anita, covered with oaks and on gentle, sloping ground,
was situated between Pasadena and Monrovia, and includes within its
13,319 acres the cities of Sierra Madre and Arcadia. Its title was
founded on a grant to Hugo Reid made in 1841, confirmed by Mexico in
1845 and by the United States in 1857.
For 20 cents an acre Hugo Reid conveyed the rancho to Henry Dalton, an
Englishman who had for 25 years lived in South America. Subsequently it
passed to William Wolfskill, whose home in the Pueblo of Los Angeles
stood on the present site of the Southern Pacific station. Wolfskill
left the rancho to his son, Lewis, and the younger Wolfskill sold it in
1872 for $85,000 to H. Newmark & Co. Both Harris Newmark of that firm
and Hugo Reid, the first owner of the rancho, have perpetuated their
names in history by their writings of early Los Angeles. Mr. Newmark’s
book, “Sixty Years in Southern California,” has had a wide circulation.
Three years later for nearly three times the amount paid by H. Newmark
and Co. the rancho was purchased by E. J. Baldwin. Lucky at the mines,
lucky in the markets, lucky with horses and luckiest of all with
land,—no wonder they called him “Lucky” Baldwin.
Baldwin at this time was a San Franciscan and had made millions in the
Ophir mines of Nevada. He built the “fireproof” Baldwin Hotel, the
largest in San Francisco, later destroyed by fire. But the charm of
Rancho Santa Anita soon took Baldwin from his northern home and he moved
into the large ranch house, devoting the balance of his life to the
development of this rancho and the acquiring of others. Upon his death
in 1909, his daughters, Anita M. Baldwin and Clara Baldwin Stocker,
succeeded him in the ownership of Rancho Santa Anita.
Baldwin’s greatest love was for horses and he developed a breed of
racing stock which became world-famous. Next to his love for horses he
loved trees and he bordered every road within his rancho with trees and
jealously fostered and guarded them. The towering lines of Eucalyptus
trees along Huntington Drive and Santa Anita Avenue through the Rancho
Santa Anita stand as evidence of the hand of “Lucky” Baldwin—those are
his monuments.