FIRST CONTACT
When Portuguese explorer Juan Cabrillo landed on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1542, he found a well-established community of Indians. For almost three centuries, the PVP remained the exclusive domain of the Tongva (sometimes referred to as Gabrielino) tribe who spoke a Shoshone language. As they had no written language, their myths and superb knowledge of their environment were passed down through storytelling. As large trees did not grow in these parts, they built houses made of willow poles and bundled reed called tule and dugout canoes out of redwood logs that drifted in on the tides from the North. They also constructed reed boats, sealing them with tar or asphalt found on the beach. The tribe would occasionally meet and trade with the Spaniards after they laid claim to the area, but mostly went about the business of their daily lives undisturbed.
FROM BEEF TO BEDROOM COMMUNITIES
By the early 1800s, the dramatic views, open land and gorgeous weather started attracting settlers. As they moved in with their cattle, horses and new crops, the native animals and plants that the Tongva survived on began to disappear. The Spanish persuaded the Native Americans to move to the missions and ranchos to learn new ways of life, farming and cattle care. In 1827, Don Jose Dolores Sepulveda procured a slice of the original 1784 |
Rancho San Pedro land grant from Manuel Dominguez to use as a cattle ranch. He called his
area Rancho de los Palos Verdes or "range of green trees." By1882, ownership of the land had passed
from the Sepulveda family through various mortgage holders to Jotham Bixby of Rancho Los Cerritos who leased it to Japanese farmers. Early in 1913, son George Bixby decided to sell 16,000 acres to Walter Fundenburg for $1.5 million. When he was unable to raise the funds, the deal fell through and eventually Bixby foreclosed on the mortgage and the land was sold to a consortium of New York investors. These investors began marketing the land for small horse ranches and residential communities. The PVP’s founding father Frank Vanderlip, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President McKinley and president of the National City Bank of New York, had big plans for the property including several elaborate private residences, a magnificent golf club and an Italian hillside village for craftsmen to live, work and sell their wares. The Olmstead Brothers firm, as in Torrance, was brought in to handle landscaping, street design, zoning and lot sizes. The original master plan was one of the best examples of urban planning of its day and included architectural restrictions. These deed restrictions, now enforced by the Palos Verdes Art Jury, are still in effect in some parts of the PVP. They also created one of the first homeowners associations. Development was fast and furious, except during the Depression. The biggest building boom was in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and eventually the PVP was divided into four cities: Palos Verdes Estates (incorporated in 1939), Rolling Hills (incorporated in 1957), Rolling Hills Estates (incorporated in 1957) and Rancho Palos Verdes (incorporated in 1973).
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