Introduction
In Part Four (chapters 11–13), White carries the California story at Point Reyes, the San Gabriel Valley, and the Tulare basin into the later 19th century. His theme is property, but more specifically the influence of the U.S. rectangular land survey on reshaping California into parcels of privately owned land, which has been complicated by natural and historical factors. The result was a rural society of landlords, tenant farmers, dispossessed indigenous inhabitants, and multiple generations of families shepherding property between older Mexican and new Anglo-American systems.
Here are a few highlighted quotes:
“The logic of the cadastral survey that created this landscape was to turn conquered land into private property.” (91)
“The grid is older than the oak.” (95)
“Few American things are as ubiquitous as the land survey. It is hidden in plain sight, and few people recognize it or its artifacts. … The surveyors over time sketched a huge and rudimentary coloring book, drawing the lines that later generations would fill it.” (95)
“The land system was designed to erase Indian claims; it was not well equipped to handle prior distributions by European empires and American republics.” (101)
Directions
Read Part Four of the book.
Pick a single property location, anywhere in California, and research its history of survey and ownership. Consider your research to be exploratory and limited to what you can glean from the websites linked below. Collect as many fragments of information as you can for a specific place. This place could be an individual farm, a street address, or a larger real-estate development located today in either an urban or rural area. Locations within California’s costal metro areas likely have property histories linked to one of the ranchos of the Spanish/Mexican era, while those in the interior valleys, mountains, or deserts are more likely to be found within the records of the General Land Office as part of the historic public domain of the United States.
CalTopo.com. This is an excellent online mapping tool covering California. The features of most relevance to this assignment are the topographic maps produced by the US Geological Survey (USGS). Not only can you view the present-day topo maps, zoomed in to reveal local detail, but you can overlay historic topo maps dating back to the 1880s. These are available as different Base Layers selectable on the right side of the browser window.
US Bureau of Indian Affairs, Pacific Region. This is a good resource for learning about the federally recognized tribes of California and their local rancherias and reservations. The state parks department has produced one of the better maps of these California Indian lands.
Wikipedia list of Spanish and Mexican ranchos. One of the nice features of this source is that each rancho is clickable to learn more about its history and geography. Note that the USGS topo maps typically display historic rancho boundaries on them, too. Related to the mission myth that White discussed in Part Three, Southern California boosters also produced a lot of rancho maps for LA County during the 20th century. Here is one colorful example from the Title Insurance and Trust Company.
Digitized records of the US General Land Office. This is one of the primary sources White used for his book. It takes some digging around, but there is a lot of amazing information here, including 19th-century government survey maps and notes, as well as documents associated with the transfer of land to private ownership. The records are searchable via clickable-map catalog.
Zillow and Redfin. These real-estate sites may be of use to you if you are doing research in a residential urban or suburban area. They will not be useful if the location you are researching is rural or non-residential.
Post a summary of what you have learned about the survey and ownership of the location you have researched. When was it surveyed? What kind of property is it today? Any sense of who owned/owns it and how its land use may have changed during the last 200 years? As much as possible, highlight similar themes to what White describes in Part Four.
Engage your classmates in a reflective conversation. As you read and re-read your classmates’ comments, add to your original ideas.
In contrast to the other discussions, you are able to read your classmates’ posts before making your own first post. Please feel free to ask questions, both to help you choose a location to explore and to help you navigate the websites above. The sooner you get started, the better able your classmates and I can help.
Cora hehuameng
4 hours ago
Textbook: Richard White, California Exposures: Envisioning Myth and History (2020)
