Rancho Los Cerritos and the Rancho Los Nietos Land Grant
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The Weekly Newspaper of Manhattan Beach Herald Publications - El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hawthorne, Lawndale, & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - Circulation 30,000 - Readership 60,000 (310) 322-1830 Vol. 9, No. 4 April 2, 2015 Spring Break Washes Ashore Next Week Inside This Issue Certified and Licensed Professionals ..................6 Classifieds ...........................2 Film Review .........................2 Food ......................................5 Looking Up ..........................2 Pets ...............................6 & 7 Politically Speaking ...........4 A view of the pier from the south side. Manhattan Beach USD spring break starts next week, April 6. The Roundhouse Aquarium, located at the end of the pier and open M-F 2-5 and Saturday 10-sunset, is a great place to take kids (roundhouseaquarium.org). Photo by Peter Thornton, [email protected]. History in our Backyard: Rancho Los Cerritos and The Rancho Los Nietos Land Grant By Rick Foster more about the rancho and land grants of to help protect California from pirates, Indians In a continued effort to search and introduce Spain and Mexico. We were intrigued by the and foreign invaders and to provide protection my family and friends to California’s rich size of this land grant. It had encompassed for the mission builders. In 1769, Junipero and dramatic history, today we visited a all the land that is now Anaheim, Artesia, Serra, a Franciscan friar, set out to build a very prominent adobe home and museum Buena Park, Bolsa Chica, Cerritos, Cypress, string of missions and forts from Baja to the right in our backyard, Rancho Los Cerritos. Downey, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington North of the state. The effort was successful Located in Long Beach, we found ourselves Beach, Lakewood, Long Beach, Los Alamitos, in that the Russian colonies never made it in the luxurious surroundings of the Virginia Naples, Norwalk, Santa Fe Springs, Seal past present day Sonoma. To further the Country Club and the historically unique and Beach, Sunset Beach and Whittier. From colonization of Alta California, many Spanish restored two-story adobe home that was built 1542–1769 Alta California, New Spain was soldiers were enlisted to patrol and protect and occupied by the John Temple family in virtually uninhabited by the non-natives. the mission settlements from invasions and 1844. The property had once belonged to In the North, there were small groups of hostile Indians. They were also encouraged the first owner, Maria Manuela Nieto-Cota, French and Russian fur hunters while in to settle in the area of the missions with their Weekend and her family, who had built two smaller the South, only native Indians inhabited the families to help populate the territory. During adobe structures on the property that no area. Although rumors had been swirling for this time, Spain was becoming increasingly longer exist. The property was a part of years that Tsarist Russia wanting to occupy strapped for cash. In order to offset the low Forecast the Nieto and Cota family from 1784-1844. parts of Alta California to enhance its fur to nonexistent salaries for these soldiers, they Besides being one of the nicer restored trade operations, but it wasn’t until 1769 that were granted permission to raise cattle for Friday, adobe homes, Los Cerritos also houses an Spain was prompted to implement a viable food, as well as, supplement their income. extensive archival book collection available plan to settle the Alta California territory. In One such soldier in this trade was Sergeant April 3 to the public by appointment only, covering an effort to thwart Russia’s plan of invasion, Jose Manuel Perez-Nieto. As Nieto’s cattle Sunny this historical time period. Spain teamed up with the Roman Catholic numbers grew, so did the need for pastures While at Rancho Los Cerritos we decided Church and used the Franciscan friars to for his cows to graze. In 1784, Nieto sent 78˚/58˚ to learn more about Manuela Nieto-Cota help settle the territory and push back the a request for land to the acting governor of and how she came to own a rancho. During Russian settlers that were arriving from Alta California for his cattle to graze. Spain our search for this information, we were Alaska. The plan was to set up a chain of had only issued 30 land grants during its surprised to learn that not only was California mission churches from San Diego to the occupation of California and Manuel Nieto Saturday, a Spanish speaking territory ruled by Spain, Northern Territory. The mission systems and three other soldiers were offered one of April 4 but California almost became part of Russia would not only be for a place of worship, these land grants. Rancho Los Nietos was only to be saved by the California Mission but doubled as fortresses and self-sustaining born out of this land grant. Sunny System. We continued to follow the Nieto communities. The priests would convert the Rancho Los Nieto was one of the first 74˚/54˚ family story and how they fit into our local native population into Christians, as well as and largest of the California land grants; California history. We discovered that Maria cultivate the land for the new colonies, thus the initial grant consisted of 300,000 acres, Manuela Nieto had inherited the land from growing a population of loyal Spanish subjects. but after some protest from priests at the her father, Manuel Nieto, as part of a larger As part of this scheme, Spanish soldiers Mission San Gabriel, the grant was cut to rancho known as Rancho Los Nietos. Rancho joined the expedition to provide protection 167,000 acres. Mission San Gabriel needed Sunday, Los Nietos was a vast 167,000 acre rancho while the missions were being built. the land to sustain the local Tongva Indians April 5 and Rancho Los Cerritos was just a small Armed with this historical background of that had lived throughout Los Angeles area portion of 27,000 acres that includes Cerritos what a desolate place California must have and the West Side. Mission San Gabriel had Sunny and Long Beach. been and how important it was for Spain to been persuading the Tongva tribes to leave 66˚/52˚ A Spanish land grant was made in 1784 populate the territory, we uncovered a story their nearby land and come live on mission called Rancho Los Nietos. From this point, of a man named Sergeant Jose Manuel Perez- lands. The remaining 167,000 acres given to the story took on a life of its’ own with Nieto. Manuel Nieto was a Spanish soldier Manuel Nieto, stretched from the hills north many twists and turns, as we uncovered sent to San Diego to the newly built Presidio See History, page 4 Page 2 April 2, 2015 Film Review Looking Up White God is a Dog Epic For the Ages Spring Eclipses of Sun and Moon Zsófia Psotta in White God, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. By Ryan Rojas for CINEMACY inconvenience to everyone except his loyal In White God, Hungarian director Kornél young owner. So when Daniel’s apartment The Moon during an eclipse in October 2014. Another lunar eclipse will occur in Southern California Mundruczó tells a thrilling and heartbreaking manager learns of the dog and tells him of on April 2. Photo by Tom Ruen. modern-day parable about the oppressions the state’s tax that must be paid for owning Based on press release from Williams team of eight intrepid scientists from the endured by lower-class people at the hands of mixed-breeds, his frustrations give way to his College, provided by Bob Eklund United States, Greece, and Slovakia traveled those with power and the social consequences doing away with Hagen, depositing him on This spring, our Sun and Moon happen to to the Norwegian archipelago to study the that may inevitably arise. The lower class the side of the road as a helpless Lili is left be so aligned that first the Moon’s shadow Sun’s outer atmosphere and the effect of people here in Mundruczó’s daring and bold to watch Hagen grow out of sight, confused, falls on the Earth and then, two weeks later, the eclipse on Earth’s weather. Pasachoff film, just happens to be non-human, real-life abandoned, and alone. the Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon. The reports, “The weather was improbably- dogs – around two-hundred and fifty of which At this point, the rest of the film brilliantly result: sky-watchers are being treated to both impossibly-wonderful, with a complete clear were involved in making this incredible genre- unfolds in cutting between Lili and Hagen a solar and a lunar eclipse. sky, much better than cloud statistics from experiment of a film. in parallel-path narratives, which track their The total solar eclipse, which occurred weather satellites had led us to expect.” The winner of last year’s Cannes Award journeys as they each struggle to navigate on March 20 (by coincidence, that date Their work was sponsored by a grant from ‘Un Certain Regard’ (an award given to through their new and uncertain worlds. Lili, was also the spring equinox), was visible the Committee for Research and Exploration films with various types of “original and at first only slightly angstful, slowly shades along a path of totality beginning in the of the National Geographic Society. different” visions and styles that work to into an authority-defying little anarchist in mid-Atlantic Ocean and continuing north Pasachoff, Chair and Field Memorial seek international recognition), White God is her own right, shown unbending to the wills to Greenland, past Iceland, and finishing in Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, nothing short of jaw-dropping in its ambition of her father or band teacher’s hypocrisies, northern Siberia.