Rancho Los Palos Verdes has been the scene of some of the earliest as
well as the latest development in Los Angeles County. For more than
thirty years before Willmore platted Willmore City, later called Long
Beach, and before Jones and Baker laid out their harbor city of Santa
Monica there had been a thriving settlement at the port of San Pedro in
the Rancho Los Palos Verdes.
The town of San Pedro, later city of San Pedro, and now part of the city
of Los Angeles, was built around that port settlement and almost the
entire district was carved not out of the Rancho San Pedro, as is
generally understood, but out of the Rancho Los Palos Verdes.
The rancho was granted June 3rd, 1846, by Governor Pio Pico to Jose
Loreto Sepulveda and Juan Sepulveda, brothers, this grant being a
ratification of a previous one made in 1827. It extended from Redondo to
Wilmington and bounded on the north and northeast by Rancho San Pedro
and on the southeast, south and west by the Pacific Ocean, comprising
31,629 acres. Pico, however, reserved a plat of land along the beach,
500 varas square, for the use of the “Superior Government of the Mexican
Nation.”
With the death of the original grantees and the passing of the ranch
title to their many heirs, Rancho Los Palos Verdes passed into a period
of extensive litigation and had it not been of such tremendous size and
of such constantly increasing value in all probability it would soon
have belonged to the attorneys. From 1865 to 1880, seventy-eight
lawsuits were instituted involving the rancho. The ranch title itself
was not confirmed until 1880. All of the heirs and their successors in
interest held undivided parts of the rancho and six partition suits were
filed before the property was divided according to the respective
ownerships. There were also a dozen suits to eject squatters, several
divorces among the owners, three condemnation suits by the United States
government for land for the lighthouse at Point Firmin, an action to fix
the boundaries of Timms Landing at the port, two foreclosure actions and
several complaints for possession.
The commissioners in one of the partition suits platted the town of San
Pedro, composed of ninety-eight blocks and this plat filled the two-fold
purpose of making an easy method of dividing the property among the
partitioners and of providing for the growth of the settlement at the
harbor.
In the years that followed the east part of the rancho progressed
rapidly while thousands of acres in the hills from Point Firmin to
Redondo were retained in a few ownerships and the land used only for
farming. Few people ever saw the rugged coast of Palos Verdes, although
Malaga Cove, Rocky Point, Point Vicente, Long Point, Portuguese Point
and Portuguese Bend were all known to fishermen.
In 1913 for a consideration of nearly $2,000,000 the western part of the
rancho was conveyed to Jay Lawler and Frank A. Vanderlip, then of New
York. Palos Verdes Estates was conceived in 1922 to develop this part of
the property and to make a world-famous community of homes. The rancho
of the Sepulvedas is a perfect setting for this effort.
[Illustration: _Verdugo Ranch House, Rancho San Rafael—the First of
the Grants_]