Rancho Guadalasca was a 30,594-acre (123.81 km2) Mexican land grant in present day Ventura County, California given in 1836 by Governor Mariano Chico to Ysabel Yorba.[1] The grant was in the southern part of the county, bordering on Los Angeles County. The grant extended along the Pacific coast near Point Mugu for about eight miles, and extending into the interior along Guadalasca Creek in the Santa Monica Mountains for about ten miles.[2]
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Long before this land was claimed as a rancho or national park it was occupied by the Chumash people. They lived, raised families and developed communities for over 9,000 years on this land. The Chumash lived primarily in small seasonal camps with a few main villages that were occupied year round. One of these villages, located on Rancho Guadalasca, was called Satwiwa which translates to “bluff”. The topography of this part of the ranch allowed it to be a main trade route for the Chumash Indians. The rancho’s wide canyon provided access to the Satwiwa village for commerce which was an important part of the Chumash society. The Chumash had developed an economic system based on beads & shells that were traded amongst the villages. Another instrument that was important to the Chumash advances in trade was the “Tomol” or canoe that was used for ocean travel. Monitory beads & shells were bought from the Channel Islands and used for trade and purchasing items. The trade and commerce was also motivated by each distinct area and what unique items they could offer for trade. Coastal villages would trade sea food and shells with inland villages that would trade game and obsidian which utilized the trade route that ran through the rancho. Rancho Guadalasca has been an important part of commerce and community for thousands of years.[3][4]
Ysabel Yorba (1789–1871), the daughter of José Antonio Yorba a European immigrant from Catalonia and his second wife, Maria Josefa Grijalva, an espanola, was born in San Diego and eventually married Jose Joaquin Maitorena in 1805 while he was still a cadet in the Spanish army.[5] Maitorena eventually reached the rank of lieutenant in 1827 and was stationed at the Presidio of Santa Barbara.[6] Maitorena was sent to Mexico as a member of congress for 1829-30, and died there of apoplexy caused by his particular dissipation.[7] After the death of her husband, the newly widowed Yorba petitioned the governor for a land grant based on the military service record of her late husband Jose Joaquin Maitorenas, citing the justification, “That being the owner of 500 head of cattle, and 40 head of broken horses, and some mares, and having no place for said stock…”[8] On the 5th of July, 1836 then Governor Chico granted Rancho Guadalasca to Ysabel Yorba with the exclusion of lands described as the lagoon and plain due to the acting Mission's need for those lands. The next year the guardian of the mission changed hands from Father Ordaz to a new leader who saw to fit to exclude the lagoon and plain from necessary Mission land and leave it open for purchase. Soon after Yorba applied for the acquisition of that land in addition to the rest of Rancho Guadalasca and was granted the additional territory which enlarged the total size of the Rancho to 30,573 acres.[9] By 1837 the Rancho owner had built a palizada house, and an adobe house the year after that.[10] The locations of the houses have yet to be found but their existence are documented. The statistical records from 1960 document Yorba as having 925 heads of cattle valued at 22,000 dollars and approximately 70 horses. She adopted Isabel Lugo and four other children after she received her 1836 land grant then added Josefina Bonilla and Isabel "Jennie" Dominguez later on. Before her death at age 82, Ysabel Yorba sold her rancho for $28,000 in U.S. gold coin, while her large estate was left to her four adopted daughters.[11] The widowed Yorba was illiterate yet operated Rancho Guadalasca from Santa Barbara and was referred to as one of the prominent woman of early California history according to J.N. Bowman.[12]
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Guadalasca was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852,[13] and the grant was patented to Ysabel Yorba in 1873.[14]
By the 1870s Rancho owners and their heirs and descendants came under pressure to sell or relinquish their land holdings to new immigrants. Selling of the land was prevalent in the late Rancho period due to the Hispanic pattern of living in town and taking care of the rancho from afar which was quite common on California land at that time. The practice of distance maintenance made it desirable for Rancho heirs to sell off their lands to newcomers and prospectors willing to pay in gold coin. Breaking up the Ranchos in the late 19th century became a slow process however that could take twenty or more years to confirm land grants. The slow process and lawyer fees put pressure on landholders to give up on their land grants and created a land boom which would in turn lead to a population increase and result in the breakup of Ventura and Santa Barbara County in 1873. Upon the breakup of the counties Rancho El Conejo along with Guadalasca were sold off and parceled out to investors.
These first investors would soon re-sell their land and it was not uncommon to have land owners that were the fourth party in the succession of title for lands once known as Rancho Guadalasca. These local developments created the opportunities for future prospectors like William Richard Broome to purchase Rancho Guadalasca land back in the 1870s. The first sale of Rancho Guadalasca however was to land investors such as the J.M. Dickerson group made up of Thomas and John Dickerson in addition to John Funk.[15] A small coastal property of 8 acres along Mugu Lagoon was also owned by the partners Goodall and Nelson who owned their own coastal steamship line, one of the first for the area.[16]
A 23,000-acre (93 km2) southern part of the rancho was purchased in 1871 by William Richard Broome (d.1891), an Englishman living in Santa Barbara.
A tenant rancher, L.J. Rose, tells of how he leased 2,300 acres of land on the Guadalasca Ranch from William Broome for a period of five years in the late 1800s. During this time Mr. Rose sued Mr. Broome’s wife, who was managing the land, for losses of $45,000 due to a Texas fever tick epidemic that devastated his herd of cattle. He was awarded $11,000.[17]
Upon the death of William Richard Broome, he attempted to entail the property, by his will, and the great rancho has been held for many years by Mrs. Frances Broome, the widow, to the exclusion the three children. About the year 1910, Thornhill Francis Broome instituted proceedings in the Superior Court of Santa Barbara county to remove his mother as executrix and trustee of the estate. After a long legal battle, he was successful in his contention, and Judge S.E. Crow declared the provisions of Lord Broome’s will to be invalid, as creating a trust not known to the laws of California. Judge Crow distributed Rancho Guadalasca one-third to Mrs. Frances Broome, the widow, and two-ninths each to the three children.[18]
An 8,200-acre (33 km2) northern part was purchased by Joseph F. Lewis in 1906. Lewis was a business associate of Adolfo Camarillo.[19] In 1932, the State of California purchased 1,760 acres (7.1 km2) of the Lewis ranch for $415,000[20] and established the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. In 2004, the state hospital was renovated and transformed into California State University, Channel Islands. The university library was funded in large by John "Jack" Spoor Broome (1918–2009), the grandson of William Richard Broome.
John S. Broome took over management of the family citrus produce business, Rancho Guadalasca, in 1946. At the time of his death he owned approximately 3,000 acres of the original 23,000. In addition to the $5,000,000 donation for the CSUCI library (one of the largest donations in Ventura County history), Mr. Broome also helped launch Casa Pacifica, a home for abused, neglected and emotionally disturbed children, also within the Rancho Guadalasca region.[21]
The name Guadalasca survives today on the property of Pt. Mugu state park with a popular biking and walking trail being named after Ysabel Yorba's original Rancho, and sometimes referred to as Guadalasco.
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