Historical Marker · No. 127
Casa de Governor Pío Pico
Whittier, Los Angeles County · California
Erected by State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the California Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee, Governor Pico Mansion Society, Poppy Trail Parlor No. 266, and Whittier Parlor No. 298, N.D.G.W, 1966
Pío de Jesús Pico was born at Mission San Gabriel in 1801, of Spanish, African, Indigenous and Italian descent, and served as the last governor of Alta California under Mexican rule. He bought most of Rancho Paso de Bartolo from Juan Crispín Pérez's heirs and built El Ranchito, a twenty-room adobe the San Gabriel River flooded twice. In 1883 he signed what he understood to be a loan from Bernard Cohn. It was a deed. Pico could not read English, the courts sided with Cohn, and he left at ninety-one, dying two years later at his daughter's house.
What the plaque says
Casa de Governor Pio Pico Following the Mexican War Pio Pico, last Mexican Governor, acquired the 9000 acre Rancho Paso de Bartolo and built here an adobe home that eventually was destroyed by the floods of 1883-84. His second adobe casa, now known as the mansion, represents a compromise between Mexican and American culture. While living here the ex-governor was active in the development of American-California. California Registered Historical Landmark No. 127 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the California Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee, Governor Pico Mansion Society, Poppy Trail Parlor No. 266, and Whittier Parlor No. 298, N.D.G.W. July 30, 1966.
Where it stands
33.99417, -118.07080 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 7.4 miThe fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.
- Chavez Ravine — 11 miThree Mexican American neighborhoods cleared for public housing that was never built, then traded to a ballclub.
- Colorado Street Bridge — 12 miBeaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.
- Domínguez Rancho Adobe — 12 miThe first Spanish land grant in California contained the whole harbor, and in 1846 fifty Californio lancers turned back three hundred Marines on it.