Verdugo Views: Portion of Verdugo land grant sold to founder of Burbank

The United States was only a few years old and California was still under Spanish rule when Jose Maria Verdugo applied for permission to graze his cattle and horses in our fertile valleys.

Verdugo, a native of Loreto, in Baja California, was serving as a military guard at the mission at San Gabriel. In 1784 he received one of the first land grants made in Alta California by the King of Spain and one of the largest ever issued during the Spanish occupation.

That land now incorporates a good part of present day Glendale, Burbank, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, the west part of Pasadena and the area in the triangle formed by the junction of the Arroyo Seco and the Los Angeles River, according to Carroll W. Parcher in his chronicle, “Glendale Community Book.”

The huge land grant remained intact for less than 100 years. Jose Maria Verdugo left the rancho to his son, Julio, and daughter, Catalina. They shared the land, often selling off parcels as funds were needed. At one point, Julio took out a mortgage to build a new house and later defaulted on the loan, leading to extensive court proceedings brought by those land purchasers. Those proceedings led to the eventual break-up of the land grant.

The court awarded large portions to many claimants, among them Benjamin Dreyfus, of Anaheim, who received more than 8,000 acres, which later became Eagle Rock and Tropico.

Andrew Glassell and Alfred B. Chapman were awarded Rancho La Cañada and more than 2,000 acres of what is now Highland Park and York Valley.

Three men who later figured prominently in Glendale’s history, O. W. Childs, C. E. Thom and Prudent Beaudry, also received title to land.

Another was David Burbank, who received legal title to about 4,600 acres he had purchased a few years before from Jonathan R. Scott, who had obtained the parcel directly from Julio and Catalina in 1857, according to E. Caswell Perry in “Burbank, An Illustrated History” written in 1987.

Burbank had come to this area in 1867 and began acquiring land soon after his arrival. In addition to the Verdugo land, he purchased La Providencia Rancho. The combined properties totaled more than 9,200 acres. The price for the two was $9,000, less than one dollar an acre, again according to Perry.

Burbank planted wheat on some of his land, raised sheep on the remainder and built a small ranch house and barn on the edge of the Los Angeles River.