Malibu, or Los Angeles Through a Tourist’s Eyes.
Story One.
Have you heard of Malibu? You probably have, even if you live far away. Maybe you've heard about the idyllic life on the Pacific coast, or the "American Riviera," or read about the movie stars who live here... I dug up an interesting story—or several interesting stories—about where it all came from, and the lives of the people connected to this place.
Malibu is an independent city, but it's part of Greater Los Angeles. Getting there is easy; the famous and very scenic Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) runs along the ocean. It's less than an hour's drive to Malibu from central L.A., and about the same for me.
As you know, I'm celebrating my retirement and the opportunity to freely explore the city where I live and its surroundings. To be honest, I went there based on a tip from a friend five years ago who suggested visiting the Adamson House, a museum in Malibu right on the ocean shore. (I finally made it! It only took five years...)
I arrived early Friday morning. The thing is, they have free garden tours on Fridays. (If you want to attract people for a garden tour, would you schedule it for ten on a Friday morning? Well, only if you're counting on people like me—pensioners!) Truthfully, there were five of us gathered there that morning.
So, let's look at the photos and read the history of the family who once owned all (all! I'm not exaggerating!) the land on the coast where the entire city of Malibu now stands.
Let's start at the beginning. (I need to vary the phrase; it's always the same...)
I'll start from afar! (There, that's better.)
The Chumash Indians lived here. They hunted, built canoes, fished...
They named their land Malibu, from the Chumash word "Humaliwo" or "U-mali-vu." It's often translated as "the place where the waves sound loudly."
In 1802, a certain José Bartolomé Tapia received a land grant from the Spanish authorities covering about 13,000 acres. That's about fifty-two square kilometers.
Free. He received. Land. A huge chunk, right on the Pacific coast! Let that sink in.
At the time, he didn't own the land in the modern sense but received it for use: grazing cattle, growing grain, raising children... The land was known as Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit.
There are no photos of him in the museum, but there's a photo of his wife, Maria Merced Tapia—how did that miracle survive?
The Tapia family used the land for several decades. Either the next owner couldn't pay a debt, or he just decided to sell the land (though who in their right mind would sell such a piece of land here?!), but again, a certain "Don Mateo" - Matthew Keller bought the ranch in 1857 for $1,400. All thirteen acres—that's about ten cents per acre. Keller managed to secure proper land rights (a patent) in 1872. He owned the ranch until his death.
After Matthew Keller's death in 1881, his heirs sold the ranch to Frederick Hastings Rindge in 1891 (sometimes cited as 1892).
Idiots! Oh, excuse me, I forgot myself... Let's translate that into literary form: Keller’s descendants made a financially imprudent decision. Is that politically correct enough?
Frederick Rindge was the fourth and final owner of the entire ranch intact. He paid approximately $133,000, which is ten dollars per acre (considered expensive for the time—they should see our land prices today! However, even back then, the price of land was rising incredibly fast: it went up tenfold in just over thirty years from sale to sale!)
Here's the family portrait:
Rhoda May Knight Rindge,
Rhoda Agatha Rindge,
Pleasant, intelligent, smiling faces...
Samuel Knight Rindge,I wonder where Rindge got his money? Searching... It turns out there are a lot of articles about him online.
Frederick Hastings Rindge, the only one of six children in his family not to die young, inherited his father's estate in 1883, valued at about $2 million (roughly over $150 million now) from investments in textile mills and real estate.
He also increased his wealth through successful business ventures in California, including founding the Conservative Life Insurance Company (now Pacific Life), serving as Vice-President of the Union Oil Company, being a director of the Los Angeles Edison Electric Company (later Southern California Edison Company), and investing in land and property, including in the Stockton area, the San Fernando Valley, and Mexico.
You, like me, weren't born into a millionaire family? Didn't inherit capital? Didn't sit in the president's chair of an oil company? Tsk, tsk, tsk...
He died unexpectedly. He passed away after suddenly losing consciousness during a business trip in California. Possibly from a diabetic coma. He was about forty-eight years old.
That's it? We don't envy him anymore? In any case, I'm luckier, even without being from a millionaire family. I'm already well past sixty happy years!
He left behind a widow, Rhoda May Knight Rindge.
Imagine the wealth and the land she owned, given that her husband was one of the wealthiest Californians of his time?! And this stretch along the ocean in Malibu, all those thousands of acres, was her property. Not her only property, but this land is what interests us.
Ah, sorry, I forgot to mention that Rindge had a grand vision for the Malibu ranch; his philosophy centered on preservation, seclusion, and creating a personal paradise. He bought this vast, untouched stretch of coast and canyon precisely intending to protect its rugged beauty from the encroaching urbanization of Los Angeles. He even expanded the property to 17,000 acres!
He saw the ranch as a place of spiritual fulfillment, a secluded, working ranch (cattle and grain) that would serve as a private, idyllic dream home for him and his family. The family motto reflected this desire for exclusive control: "California shall be ours while the stars remain." He even wrote a book about Malibu: Happy Days in Southern California (1898), detailing his life on the Malibu Ranch and giving rich descriptions of the Californian landscapes.
That wasn't his only book, by the way; he also wrote on religious topics and meditation (for the interested: Can You Read Your Title Clear to a Mansion in the Skies? (1889), Thoughts Concerning Ourselves and Our Interests (1890), Meditations on Many Matters (1890), The Best Way (1902)).
And when did he find time to work?!
Remember the family motto? Forgot it?—Too bad. I'll remind you: "California shall be ours while the stars remain." This motto would play a role in Malibu's destiny... and an unkind role in the Rindge family's life.
Rindge, I remind you, died relatively young, leaving a widow and three children.
May K. Rindge... now the widow, remembering the family motto, tried to keep the Malibu lands unified, familial, untouched, and inviolable. And it was a huge, tempting piece of land for many...
This could be a separate post:
A short story about a strong woman, a widow, who won a war against one of the strongest corporations in the United States.
In the early 1900s, the Southern Pacific Railroad planned to build a coastal route from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara.
Which path would you choose for a railway?—The flattest, shortest one. But on the land you want to grab, people already live, they've built houses, and the land is already their property!
The Rindge Ranch offered the most tempting route along the ocean, at sea level, along the coastal mountains. The railroad company planned to acquire this section using the right of Eminent Domain.
A Note on Eminent Domain: This is the right of the government (including states, counties, and municipalities) to take private property for public use, provided just compensation is paid to the owner. This right is enshrined in the US and California Constitutions.
Yes, yes, I hear you, "provided just compensation is paid to the owner"—you'll be paid "just" compensation for your house and land. But just for whom? And what will you be able to buy for that compensation in the same place you lived? Well, okay, maybe you'll be lucky and buy something, but what will your taxes be on the new purchase? Oh, don't talk to me about justice...
According to family legend, May Rindge promised her husband before his death in 1905 that she would do everything possible to protect their "Land of the Sunsets" and keep out both squatters and corporations.
A Note on Squatters: A squatter is a person who occupies an empty, abandoned, or unused residential or non-residential property (building, land) without legal right.
Well, squatters are difficult to fight, but possible, though long and costly. But corporations...
The lawyers hired by the widow unearthed a little-known law from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) that prohibited building two parallel railways on the same piece of land.
To exploit this legal loophole, May Rindge, who became the first woman railroad president in California, built her own private line, the Hueneme, Malibu & Port Los Angeles Railway!
Although this fifteen-mile track primarily served a utilitarian function for the ranch (hauling hides, grain, etc.), it was often called "the railroad to nowhere" or "the road that begins nowhere and ends nowhere." But the road served its main purpose: it became an operational railroad!
The Southern Pacific Railroad had to retreat. Forced to change its route, the company laid a new line inland through the San Fernando Valley, not through Malibu.
If they had built the railway along the ocean, everyone would be riding trains, not cars. You'd ride along, enjoying the ocean view from the window! There would be a pristine white railway station here in Malibu. In the morning, vacationers in wide straw hats, with picnic baskets and blankets, would step off the carriages and head to the beach to sit under umbrellas in striped bathing suits...
I have a wild imagination, a vivid fantasy... That's what I was thinking while driving and then looking for roadside parking!
The railway wasn't built. Or rather, they built their own, short, private one. This was a major, costly, and successful legal victory for the lone widow, if you can call her that, against one of the largest and most influential corporations in the United States. Not alone, of course, as she had a staff of lawyers. And do you know how much the legal services cost her? They say over a million dollars annually... In those years! Even now, that's an astronomical sum.
May Rindge won the battle against the railroad, but her litigation didn't end there. She spent the next two decades and much of her inherited fortune on a similar large-scale legal battle against the state's attempts to run a public highway (which later became the Roosevelt Highway, and is now the PCH - Pacific Coast Highway) across her land.
She ultimately lost this case in the US Supreme Court in 1923.
Due to these extensive legal battles, by 1926, May Rindge became land-rich but cash-poor. She tried to remedy the situation: she attempted to generate income by drilling oil wells on the Malibu property. They didn't find oil, but they did discover large clay deposits. A factory was built to produce decorative tiles: Malibu Potteries.
The final blow was the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. Who could have foreseen the Great Depression! Even if someone thought about the possibility of hard times, they didn't know when, and they thought it wouldn't be "tomorrow."
Oh, I haven't told you about the family's first home yet! Frederick and May Rindge's original Victorian ranch house in Malibu met a sad fate: it was destroyed by a wildfire in 1903.
This house was at the foot of the hill now called Serra Hill. After the fire, the Rindge family moved their main residence to Los Angeles, from where they continued to manage their Malibu ranch.
Much later, between 1928 and 1932, May Rindge began construction of a massive, luxurious, but ultimately unfinished mansion on Laudamus Hill (now Serra Hill).
Do you think life there, in the monastery, was without incident? No! It's May Rindge's former property; it's Malibu! A significant portion of this structure, along with many valuable Malibu Potteries tiles, was tragically destroyed by a catastrophic wildfire in 1970.
The statue of Saint Francis, which survived the fire, stands against the backdrop of the ruins, September 28, 1970.
The property, restored as much as possible, still belongs to the Franciscans. The monastery stands there, but it's not visible from the road, and there's no public access.
Ultimately, May Rindge lost control of her vast land empire due to financial obligations, including millions of dollars owed in unpaid property taxes and debts, and died in 1941 with only seven hundred fifty dollars in her bank account.
"California shall be ours while the stars remain." Remember that?
That is, if you don't get into a financial dispute with the government and the law.
Maybe she should have sold some of the land, not fought the government, and saved the money? Maybe she shouldn't have followed the family motto so literally?
No, no, you don't need to worry about the heirs; they are still (as far as can be found online) among the distinguished and wealthy, but the land in Malibu now belongs to others. The daughter's house still stands, but now it's a museum.
Let's just rephrase it: "California will be ours while the stars remain"...
"Everyone's," as my dad sometimes said...
at least a part of it,
at least a little bit...
P.S.
Oh, as always, I got carried away with the family history and didn't tell you about the Adamson House museum, which I really liked. Tomorrow, okay?
I'm not the first one to be interested...
The story of the family and the battle for the land has already been described in David K. Randall's book, The King and Queen of Malibu: The True Story of the Battle for Paradise. The book can be bought at the museum.
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