I am currently reading a book by Carlos Manuel Salomon entitled Pío Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California. Already I’ve made some interesting discoveries. Apparently, at the founding of Los Angeles, the majority of its residents were Mexicans of mixed race, predominantly black.

Also, I knew that, toward the end of his life, Pico was cheated by a Yanqui swindler of his ranch in Whittier, which Martine and I visited in 2019. But, as Salomon states in his Introduction:

Anglo-American avarice and greed was not the underlying factor in Pico’s demise. He and his Californio counterparts were often fiercely independent and dictated their own fates.

The Pío Pico State Historical Park is a charming bastion of early California history in otherwise charmless Whittier. There is another associated location in Mission Hills, which was where Pío’s brother Andrés lived: The Andrés Pico Adobe. Finally, the place where Pío Pico is buried is the Workman & Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry.

All of these are places Martine and I have visited because of our interest in Southern California’s Passport 2 History program, which is run out of the Leonis Adobe in Calabasas. They publish a booklet about interesting historical sites in Los Angeles, Kern, Orange, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties.

Now that the weather in L.A. has cooled down, I will try to visit (and write about) more of these sites.