In 1865 the partnership made the first of what would become many divisions in Rancho Santa Anita, selling the land in two sections. Unfortunately, almost three years of devastating drought put an end to cattle ranching in Southern California and their plans. Barker, Los Angeles promoters, had purchased Rancho Santa Anita sight unseen from the floundering Rowe. The unlikely combination of Albert Dibblee, San Francisco vigilante coordinator, and William Corbitt and Mr. Joseph Rowe quietly left for Australia after clearing $2,300 on his $33,000 land investment. In 1857, Rowe borrowed $12,500 at 24% interest to cover his debts, and when that proved insufficient he managed to find a bidder for the ranch itself, an investment partnership that paid a mere $16,645 for title to Rancho Santa Anita. Rowe’s eventual financial mismanagement and ranching inexperience finished the ranching career of the only owner to actually lose money on his investment in Santa Anita. An additional $6,000 went into rebuilding the crumbling Hugo Reid Adobe. Rowe, owner and star equestrian of Rowe’s Olympic Circus, paid $33,000 cash for the land on which he planned to make his permanent home. In 1881 Henry Dalton by lost the homesite in a mortgage foreclosure.
Rancho Santa Anita was purchased by Reid’s friend and Rancho Azusa neighbor, Henry Dalton.ĭuring the ensuing decade and a half, the title to Rancho Santa Anita passed through a number of hands.
Scarcely two years after he received full title (1845), however, the quixotic Reid found himself tired of life as a ranchero and on the brink of insolvency. Rancho Santa Anita has justly earned its reference as the “fairy spot of the Valley.” The rancho peaked under the ownership of Hugo Reid when hides and tallow furnished a stable economic base and fine mission plantings flourished in a benevolent climate. Rancho Santa Anita: The Trials of Ownership Hugo Reid, a Scotsman with Mexican citizenship, married to a Gabrielino woman, became the first private owner of Rancho Santa Anita and in 1840 constructed his adobe house next to Baldwin Lake. Three thousand years ago, the homesite of the earliest inhabitants of today’s Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden was known as Aleupkigna, “the place of many waters.” With the arrival of the Spanish in California some two hundred years ago, the residents of Aleupkigna became known as the Gabrielino (in reference to the mission responsible for their conversion), and the land upon which they had lived before removal to the Mission became Rancho Santa Anita, an agricultural outpost of Mission San Gabriel.