Spain led Europe in reaching this remote land, sailing around the tip of South America. In the middle of the 1500s, the first explorers tread lightly with sporadic trips to California. For two centuries, they missed the native residents here, crossing the Santa Monica Mountains at the Sepulveda Pass and pushing northward. Eventually, King Charles III of Spain sent Franciscan friars to establish missions in California. The newly named Gabrieleño Indians met Western civilization.
The name Cahuenga came with a long highway, El Camino Real, that passed through the area. King Charles III of Spain owned it. Father Junipero Serra regularly walked it when establishing the California missions, the first one in San Diego, the second farther north in Monterey.
Dusty in summer, muddy in winter, El Camino Real was a narrow trail that took the path of least resistance from Los Angeles. The path was a shortcut and major cart traffic had to follow the Los Angeles River around the mountain. Following today’s topography, El Camino Real passed Fourth Street at Vermont, Beverly at Normandie, Western at Santa Monica, and Sunset at Tamarind. It then went through a grove of alders west of Gower and north of Sunset, crossing Hollywood Boulevard at Ivar Avenue, and then curving into today’s Cahuenga Boulevard. A steep grade near the Cahuenga Pass’s southern entrance forced travelers to break down heavy loads and haul them over in several trips.
The Franciscans enforced the notion that they owned the land and its inhabitants. The Cabueg-na got a chapel (now a landmark near Universal Studios) and then a mission, San Fernando, which originally stood a few canyons west of their village. The Native Americans were decimated slowly and torturously, serving as slaves or dying of European diseases. After vanquishing Cabueg-na, the San Fernando Mission moved farther northwesterly, where it stands today, to focus on tribes in that end of the valley
Travelers approaching the Cahuenga Pass from the south had to climb a steep grade.
AMONG THE NOPAL
The Spanish missionaries picked the largest and most prosperous native community, Yang-na, for their first local settlement. The area’s earliest redevelopment project, Yang-na became El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles.
King Charles III of Spain granted large sections of this pristine land to his conquering heroes. A man named Moreno received the Cahuenga Valley — including the area now called Hollywood — and became an absentee landlord.
Three years after Moreno’s grant, Mexico began fighting Spain for independence. Traffic on the El Camino Real increased as Spanish and Mexican armies marched to and from battle.
Before its full independence in 1821, Mexico claimed the land of the Cahuengas. Moreno lost his grant. The area’s first subdivision, Rancho Los Feliz and Rancho La Brea, divided Hollywood’s basin into two giant parcels that spread considerably southward. A trace of this configuration remains today where the names La Brea and Los Feliz appear. The appropriately named El Centro Avenue is an approximate dividing line.
La Brea received its name from the brea (tar) pits included in the grant to a partnership of three Mexican men. Los Feliz was named after Jose Antonio Feliz who received all land to the Los Angeles River. He made his home on the site of the old Maug-na village.
Rancho Los Feliz, one of the loveliest and most romantic properties in Southern California, had canyons of parkland, great oak trees, and huge, cool pools of spring water. Señor Feliz had the most productive vineyards, orchards, and cornfields. He filled his hills with horses, mules, oxen, goats, and sheep. His herds of grazing cattle appeared on the Hollywood plain at this time. In the estimation of Feliz and many who settled here, the foothill land served no other purpose.
Cattle graze on Rancho Los Feliz. Mt. Hollywood is in the background.
During these years, the area remained devoid of inhabitants other than coyotes, small animals, cattle, and wild horses. For the first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, wild horses were considered pests and slaughtered so they would not compete with cattle for grazing land.
Hollywood’s first name, Nopalera, indicates that it was mostly roadside scenery. Nopal was a Mexican cactus species that covered the area. Nopalera would change hands at an accelerating pace, but its original name appeared on the first tract maps of Los Angeles City.
For thirty years, a generation of Californios, born and raised in California, had an independence from faraway Mexico. Traffic on El Camino Real increased with a more secular crowd of businessmen, messengers, and family processions. El Camino Real was the Californio-preferred route for foot and horse traffic.
Eight miles away, Los Angeles with its flat-roofed houses was the Californios’ largest city. Its vineyards served the town’s major industry, wine making.
The Californios created a lifestyle with a medieval sensibility of gentility and courtliness that lasted into the twentieth century. A lordly, expansive code of conduct allowed them to open their immense land holdings. A traveler through Nopalera was welcome to take a horse (please!) or slaughter a cow for food, provided he left the cowhide for the owner.
The overlapping invasion of the United States when California became a golden name hastened the Californios’ demise. U.S. immigrants started with a trickle of hardy travelers, but were numerous enough in 1842 to join the Californios in expelling Mexico from the region. The peace treaty with Mexico was signed in 1847 at a historic site near Universal Studios. By 1850, California was a United State. By 1851, the township of Los Angeles encompassed many surrounding ranches, including Nopalera.
Upon American acquisition, the United States Congress required confirmation of Spanish and Mexican grants by U.S. authorities. The title confirmation process typically took ten to twenty years. Many landowners who did not understand English failed to have their grants confirmed. Rancho La Brea was taken from its heirs, who fought their claim from court to court for over two decades. The Feliz family quietly sold out in 1861 for one dollar an acre and left only their name.
During the time of the Civil War, American migration to California slowed, allowing the Californios to continue their way of life.
Don Tomás built the first house in Hollywood, an adobe that stood near Franklin Avenue and Outpost Drive.
FIRST HOMESTEADERS
Four years into California’s statehood, the first house appeared in Nopalera. It belonged to a Californio and stood at Franklin Avenue and Outpost Drive, among the tall sycamores of Sycamore Canyon.
This was Tomás Urquidez’s second claim. He had recently lost land granted to him in a Mexican title because he had not registered it with the U.S. government. When the United States opened Nopalera to homesteaders, Don Tomás staked enough of Sycamore Canyon for a small ranch where he could graze his horses and cattle on the hillside.
His adobe-and-wood house had its roof insulated with brea fetched from the nearby tar pits. The structure had one long main room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen at the south with a fireplace for cooking. The main room, with its packed adobe floor, contained a long, heavy wooden table and oak chairs with leather seats and backs.
As other houses appeared in the valley, Casa Don Tomás remained the most fashionable and largest in the valley. It was a social center for the Californios of the neighborhood. They staged their traditional fiestas, rodeos, and Los Pastores Christmas celebrations here.
Following Don Tomás, new homesteaders lived in small adobes near the foothills. Others with no official claim to property built mud structures between the Nopal patches. Most settlers chose to raise horses and cattle, selling them in Los Angeles.
In 1862, a man built an adobe on the hill of today’s Ivar Avenue and brought the first flock of sheep to Nopalera. It proved a successful new business. By 1865, a Basque named Amestoy ran a large sheep herd in the eastern part of Nopalera, building his mud hut at Franklin and Western Avenues.
In 1873, Mayor Nichols of Los Angeles bought 100 acres south of Laurel Canyon and set his son up in the cattle business. The younger Nichols had become involved in a dispute over a woman and his life was threatened.
His father needed to get him out of town. A year later, the son would kill his rival in a gunfight in Los Angeles. Nichols Ranch became Nichols Canyon.
An eccentric named Greek George who lived in an adobe by the swamp at Kings Road and Fountain Avenue owned land in the Pass (the site of the Hollywood Bowl) where he kept camels from Smyrna. Greek George’s camels briefly delivered supplies and mail to Fort Tejon. They roamed across Nopalera, grazing with the livestock, bringing the first hint of strangeness to the area. Camel races became part of the festivities at Casa Don Tomás.
The Pass Road looking south. A grove of trees surrounds the Eight Mile House.
The Eight-Mile House was Hollywood’s first hotel.
Travelers camp on the Cahuenga Pass.
PASS ROAD
Two years into California’s statehood, a road for two-wheel carts was graded through the Pass gully. Six years later, in 1858, the Butterfield Stagecoach ran mail twice weekly from San Francisco to St. Louis. Soon, Butterfield came every other day.
The Cahuenga Pass Hotel appeared at the top of the southern side of the Pass, among a grove of blue-gum trees. It became a familiar landmark known as the Eight-Mile House that operated until the early 1920s.
When hard times fell in 1858, the region fell into demoralized poverty. The barbarism lasted ten years. Los Angeles oozed crooks, thieves and con artists. With an unsavory population drifting down from the northern mines, the Cahuenga Pass Road became dangerous. Thieves used the crevices in Dark Canyon to stash their loot. (Dark Canyon, graded, paved and developed, is Barham Blvd.)
A notable Pass traveler was William Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, visiting Los Angeles in 1868 after buying Alaska for the United States. The mayor of Los Angeles, with a welcoming party, met Seward’s stagecoach close to the intersection of Hollywood and Cahuenga Boulevards, escorting him into the city while serenading him.
By 1880, most of Nopalera was firmly in American hands. Southern Pacific Railroad had arrived in Los Angeles from San Francisco, supplanting stages for mail delivery and passenger travel. Traffic thinned on the Pass Road, and the road lay neglected.
Early Hollywood farmers, the Duens lived near Western Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.
NOPALERA, HERE WE COME
In 1860, a California farmer shipped the first cargo of wheat to Europe. Like a starting bell, it signaled opportunity to farmers around the world who came to participate in a trade that grew to huge proportions.
In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the U.S. government re-surveyed the area. Much of the ungranted land went to Southern Pacific Railroad that planned to link the state with rail. Remaining parcels of 160 acres each were available for homesteaders at $1.25 an acre.
With the opening of the man-made harbor, San Pedro, in 1868, the first Southern California real estate boom began. Steamers loaded with people seeking cheap land arrived from San Francisco. Immigrants in large numbers, seeking a perfect spot to farm, spread across the basin. Prospective buyers in Nopalera found the valley mostly as it had been for millions of years.
An international, agrarian population appeared suddenly, making its presence obvious. According to Hollywood biographer E.O. Palmer, “The Cahuenga Valley seemed one great barley field dotted here and there by a windmill with its surrounding garden and young orchard.” Wooden houses with front porches began to outnumber adobes. Few of the farms had been fully plowed. Most farmers had a cow and two horses.
The government surveyors’ delineation still crudely included landmarks like trees and big rocks. It was the first step in defining future roads. Farmers, plowing up the old trails, routed traffic along property lines that would eventually become the streets of Hollywood. A second official road called Foothill appeared crossing Pass Road and running westward to the ocean. It is today’s Santa Monica Boulevard.
A bridge crossed a creek at Bronson and Franklin Avenues.
Prime farming land started south of Foothill Road, where Germans, Danes, and Swedes snapped up parcels. In the Hollywood Boulevard area, land went for ranches. A Mexican bought the northwest corner of Gower St. and Franklin Ave. A Spaniard named Andrada acquired 20 acres at the northeast corner of Franklin and Bronson Avenues which was known as the Andrada ranch for years. The eastern and western ends of Nopalera remained relatively untouched where Amestoy and Nichols continued to pasture their sheep and cattle.
Looking to Hollywood from Normandie and Melrose in the 1880’s.
John Gower brought grain farming to Hollywood in 1869. Coming from Hawaii, the Englishman staked 160 acres from Sunset to Melrose and Bronson to Gower. He harvested his own wheat and barley crops and those of his neighbors. Gower Street had its beginning as the trail on the western edge of John Gower’s barley farm.
Tiburcio Vasquez.
In this decade of the 1870s, the Pass Road provided the only link to the nearest market, the Plaza in Los Angeles. Sunday was the busiest day on Pass Road, when the faithful climbed onto spring wagons and went to church, an hour’s drive away. Hollywood’s only general store, a Chinese laundry with a small supply store, appeared in 1871 at Sunset and Cahuenga Boulevards.
As subdividers eventually tore up the old map of Nopalera, Pass Road, chopped and dissected, became known as Old Pass Road and then disappeared into the city.
Californio travelers in Nopalera drove the immigrant farmers crazy, preferring their old routes across what was now private property. Battles between possessors of unregistered holdings and new landowners with fresh U.S. certificates created misery for everyone.
The Californios mostly despised Americans for their usury. A horde of American Shylocks had dispossessed them of their land. Tiburcio Vasquez, a Monterey-born Californio, became a robber/hero from 1863 to 1874, pillaging American farms from Monterey to San Diego while sparing his own countrymen. Possibly an inspiration for the fictitious Zorro, he made some of his richest hauls from the Cahuenga Valley. Homesteaders along Pass Road had terrible problems keeping their livestock from bandits. Horse thieves were rampant. John Gower had his horses stolen frequently.
The annual fiesta continued at Casa Don Tomás. The crowds grew as the valley became more populated. At their height in the 1870s, the festivities drew Californio, Spanish and Mexican families from the Cahuenga and San Gabriel Valleys. After authorities captured Vasquez in 1874 at Greek George’s adobe (George turned his friend in for the $15,000 reward that he never received), immigrant settlers felt more comfortable attending the festivities. For the next five years, the rodeos in Sycamore Canyon became a cross-cultural event.
Whether stubborn or simple, Don Tomás had again not secured title on his land. One evening, returning from a celebration at Mission San Gabriel, he found himself dispossessed of Casa Don Tomás by the same American who had taken the land of Don Tomás’s neighbor, José Valdez, (located in today’s West Hollywood). Don Tomás, old and blind, moved into his daughter’s house in the foothills of Vine Street and lived out his days in bitterness. The usurpation of Casa Don Tomás dealt the deathblow to Californio life in the Cahuengas. During a terrible drought in 1879, the last rodeo was held. (Sixty years later, in 1926, Valdez’s son, Teofilo, living at 1616 Hudson Avenue in Hollywood, had not forgiven the Americans for robbing his father.)
THE BIRTH OF PROSPECT
Born in an age of speculation, Hollywood Boulevard began as a narrow dirt road defined by adjacent property lines. Its first name, Prospect Avenue, came from John Bower, who had arrived from the mines in the Sierra foothills.
Figuring real estate might prove luckier for him, Bower bought a small government parcel in 1872 at the intersection of Pass Road and Prospect Avenue (today’s Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue). Many considered it a prime spot for a Los Angeles suburb. It took Bower three years to preempt surrounding lots and acquire the acreage from Franklin Avenue to Sunset Boulevard, Whitley Avenue to Vine Street. Bower subdivided, mortgaged, redeemed, sold, and repurchased his land several times in a rocky ride of real estate cycles.
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nbsp; The resolution of the Rancho La Brea dispute came in 1873. A patent transferred nearly the entire tract to the Hancock brothers, Henry, a surveyor who mapped the tract, and John. For his legal services in the case, U.S. Senator Cornelius Cole received a tenth of the ranch (500 acres) on Pass Road between Gower and Seward Streets, Sunset Boulevard and Rosewood Avenue.
Competition to raise a town in Nopalera began. Senator Cole immediately began developing his ranch, eventually moving to it in 1881. After setting 25,000 grapevines north of Santa Monica Boulevard (why we have a Vine Street today), Senator Cole and his son, Seward, initiated the town of Colegrove. Other developers planned “Cahuenga” at Sunset and Gardner. They anticipated five hundred acres of high-class suburban homes for Los Angeles businessmen. Water for the project would come from the Laurel Canyon stream. “Cahuenga” went bust in a year.
Senator Cornelius Cole.
The Chinese laundry at Cahuenga and Sunset Boulevards.
An influential neighbor for Bower was Don José Mascarel. Born in France, Mascarel had quickly assimilated to his adopted culture. A sea captain, he fought on the American side of the Californio-Mexican war, transporting supplies to General Fremont. He served as mayor of Los Angeles from 1864-65. Mascarel sold his ship, the Jeanette, to buy forty acres in Nopalera bounded by Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue, Vine to Gower Streets. His son-in-law built the family’s home on a central knoll now under the Hollywood Freeway. Mascarel’s wife, a Native American, kept to her own customs; visitors often found her bare breasted, grinding corn on the kitchen floor.
The Story of Hollywood Page 2