The most prominent family in the growth and development of the Long Beach and West Orange County area were the Bixbys. The family’s “patriarch” of sorts was Lewellyn Bixby who first came to California in 1850 for the Gold Rush but soon joined with his cousins Thomas and Benjamin Flint to switch to mercantilism and then sheep raising. Thanks to prudent business practices and the opportunities provided by the Civil War, Flint, Bixby & Co. became very successful and within 20 years they would become the largest landowners in the state of California. Below is a bullet-point listing of the some of the key events in their growth.
- March 1853 – Dr. Thomas Flint, Benjamin Flint and Llewellyn Bixby (cousin) formed company Flint, Bixby Co.; 1854 – arrived in California after driving about 2,000 sheep from Illinois;
- October 1855 – bought Rancho San Justo from Don Francisco Perez Pacheco for $25,000;
- 1860 — Author John Hayes lists California wool production for 1860 as 3,260,000 pounds. 10 years later it would be 19,472,666 pounds — a growth of almost 600%. The herd of Flint, Bixby & Cole is listed as 16,000 head in Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties — source: Three Years in America, 1859-1862, p270 — By Israel Joseph Benjamin; Published by Ayer Publishing, 1975; ISBN 0405066937, 9780405066931; 625 pages,San Mateo County Gazette ; Redwood City, San Mateo County, California
Saturday Morning, February 11, 1860, Vol. 1 No.45
SHEEP IN CALIFORNIA – From a careful estimate, by one engaged in the business, it is computed that there are now three hundred thousand head of sheep in this State. The largest flock by any one firm, is that of Flint, Bixby & Co., San Juan, Monterey county, who own about twenty thousand, nearly all of which are of American stock, and a few bucks are full blood merino, among them the well known French merino buck whose fleece, of the growth of fourteen months, weighed forty-two pounds after being washed.
- 1862 – Flint-Bixby and Hollister had a falling out over a business matter and the partnership was dissolved, with Flint-Bixby taking all the land east of the San Benito River, and Hollister, the land west of the river, and dividing the sheep evenly. Later, Colonel Hollister claimed he received the worst of the deal and asked $10,000 in settlement of the damages. Dr. Flint then offered to trade his holdings with Hollister if he would pay him $10,000. This offer was accepted, with Colonel Hollister taking the land east of the San Benito River, and Dr. Flint taking the land lying to the west, including the San Juan Valley.In 1862, soon after the division of the Rancho, Colonel Hollister married Ann (Hannah) James, daughter of the famous vigilante leader, Samuel James, in San Francisco. They built a home at the base of a small hill known as Park Hill today.
- 1862 — Bixby sheep ranches are growing in Northern California. Bixbys now have 17,000 sheep which are principally Merino, plus a thorough bred Spanish Merino ram named “Old Abe” which they purchased for $1,000 from E. Hammond of Vermont. Sarah Bixby Smith, Adobe Days, p. 9, recounted her memory of “a majestic ram with wool that hung to the ground and great curling horns who lived with a few favored wives n the fine sheep-barn up the hill.” Article from the American Stock Journal in Bixby Family: Southern Califfornia Land Use Changes.Shortly after his 1862 marriage, W.W. Hollister decided he had been slighted in the dissolution of his partnership with Flint-Bixby, and asked for a $10,000 damage settlement. Instead, Thomas Flint offers to trade land holdings if Hollister paid him $10,000. Hollister agreed, and the two parties swapped land.
- 1866 – Flint, Bixby selects Jotham Bixby (Llewellyn’s brother) to manage southern California sheep ranching operations (Rancho Los Cerritos in Southern California);
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1865 – Benjamin Flint gets involved with founding of Southern Pacific Railroads 1865:
A group of businessmen in San Francisco, California, led by Timothy Phelps, found the Southern Pacific Railroad to build a rail connection between San Francisco and San Diego, California.
The Southern Pacific Railroad was incorporated in December 1865. In July 1866, congress passed a bill authorizing the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, based in San Francisco to build a southern transcontinental line from San Francisco to meet the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company, building westward from St. Louis. Both companies were to meet at the Colorado River near the 35th parallel. The Southern Pacific acquired the San Francisco & San Jose Railroad following authorization by the state legislature in March. Grading began on the extension southward at 4th Street in San Jose in April 1868, carried out by the Santa Clara & Pajaro Valley Railroad which had been incorporated in January.
The Southern Pacific was purchased by the directors of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford, Collins P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker in September 1868. The Southern Pacific line was extended, with service operating to Delano in July 1873.
When the Southern Pacific Railroad, began planning a route through the Southern part of the state, both the City and County of Los Angeles realized that Los Angeles and its emerging port were dependent on a railroad link to the rest of the nation to have any hope of survival. Southern Pacific partner Charles Crocker reminded city leaders of the consequences if they failed to cooperate, telling them “I will make grass grow in your streets.” To insure that the Southern Pacific would terminate their second transcontinental railroad in Los Angeles County, the City and County of Los Angeles gave their holdings in the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad to the Southern Pacific Railroad on April 23, 1873. In addition, the county provided a $602,000 cash subsidy to the Southern Pacific and rights of way to build lines to Pomona and Anaheim. Phineas Banning and Henry Tichenor also sold their shares in the line making the directors of the Southern Pacific virtually the sole owners.
Southern Pacific work crews began construction of a branch line to Anaheim in the summer of 1873, which opened on January 17, 1875. Another line was extended from the station on Alameda Street to Naud Junction where one line continued 22 miles northward to San Fernando, and the other 29 miles eastward to Spadra in 1874.
Southern California and the East were linked at Lang Station, near Palmdale on September 5, 1876 with the opening of the Southern Pacific line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Then on July 27, 1866, an act of Congress approved the plans of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company to build from Springfield, Missouri, via Albuquerque and the 35th parallel, to the Pacific Coast. By the same act the Southern Pacific Railroad Company was authorized to build to a connection with the Atlantic and Pacific at the Colorado River, and to receive the government land grants.a Southern Pacific Organized The Southern Pacific Railroad Company, which was destined in later years to join with the Central Pacific in forming the present day Southern Pacific Company, was incorporated December 2, 1865, under the laws of NOTE 2a-The act provided for a grant of forty alternate sections in the territories and twenty sections in the states, also a 200-foot right of way. No money was to be paid by the government to aid in construction. Work was to commence within two years; complete not less than fifty miles per year after the second year; and com I t and equip main line of whole road by Y.1,’ 41 1878. By Act of July 25, 1868, Congress extended construction time, requiring completion of first thirty miles by Jan 1, 1870, and subsequent construction of twenty miles annually. PAGE TWELVE California, to build from San Francisco Bay south through the counties of Santa Clara, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Tulare, Los Angeles to San Diego, and thence cast through San Diego County to a junction at the state line with a contemplated road from the Mississippi River. Capital stock was $30,000,000 and the incorporators were: T. G. Phelps, C. I. Hutchison, J. B. Cox, B. W. Hathaway, Writ. T. Coleman and J. W. Stephenson, all of San Francisco; Benjamin Flint, San Juan; W. S. Rosencranz, Cincinnati, 0.; Chas. N. Fox and B. G. Lathrop of San Mateo. Phelps was president, Fox was secretary, and Win. J. Lewis engineer. Little headway was made in the plans of this company until it was recognized as a part of a. second transcontinental railroad by the act of Congress in July, 1866. Provisions of the act were accepted on November 24, and on January 3 following, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company filed a map designating the general route it proposed to take from San Francisco through San Jose, Gilroy and Tres Pinos in the Santa Clara and San Benito valleys, thence across Pacheco Pass into San Joaquin Valley and south over Tehachapi Pass to Mojave, where the line turned easterly toward the Colorado River. Congress definitely approved this route by a resolution -on June 28, 1870. The originally proposed line down the coast to San Diego was, in part, temporarily abandoned. The first step of the Southern Pacific was to acquire the line already in operation between San Francisco and San Jose, owned by the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad Company. Stock of San Francisco County in this road was purchased following authorization of the state legislature on March 30, 1868. Three weeks later, on April 21, ground was broken at 4th Street in San Jose for extension of the line to Gilroy. This work was carried on by the Santa Clara and Pajaro Valley Railroad and was completed on March 13, 1869. Trains were operated over the branch from Gilroy to Tres Pinos as far as Hollister on July 13, 1871, and on August 12, 1873, the line was completed to Tres Pinos, where the terminus has since remained. From Gilroy the line was built by the Southern Pacific. By this time Governor Stanford and his associates in the Central Pacific had acquired a controlling interest in the budding youn- railroad company and on MiNkiiic. P. J10V~pre%11RMft%T4fft Cen 40 bANINW-4004he Se e I r brt om nship between the two lines. This alliance became a matter of official record on October 12, 1870, when the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad Company, the Santa Clara and Pajaro Valley Railroad Company and the California Southern Railroad Company’a consolidated to form a new Southern Pacific Railroad Company.’a Companies Consolidate From that date ownership and control of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific properties was in the hands of the same men, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins and their associates. Although additional explorations and surveys had been made during 1869-70 over the proposed route from Gilroy through Pacheco Pass to the San Joaquin Valley; thence over the Tehachapi Pass to Los Angeles; and southeast through San Gorgonio Pass as far as Phoenix,la Southern Pacific had no definite route into Southern California until Congress on March 3, 1871, chartered the Texas Pacific Railroad Company’a and authorized South NOTE 3a-The Santa Clara and Pajaro valley Railroad Cow?an% was ._incorporated ,e January 2, 1868. T . lifor ia Souther. Railroad Company was incorporated January 22, 1870, to build from Gilroy to Salinas but did not carry out the work in its own name, NOTE 4a-This company had capital stock of $50,000,000. The incorporators were: Lloyd Tevis, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles Mayne and Peter Donahue. Authorized to operate a railroad from San Francisco through the counties of San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Monterey, Fresno, Tulare, Kern, San Bernardino and San Diego to the Colorado River, and such branch line railroads as the directors deemed advantageous. NOTE 5a-Reminiscences of Lott D. Norton, assistant engineer during construction. NOTE 6a-Texas Pacific Railroad Company was authorized to build from Marshall, Texas, via El Paso through New Mexic,), Arizona
http://cprr.org/Museum/Southern_Pacific_Bulletin/index-OCR.html
- 1869 – Jotham Bixby (J. Bixby & Co.) exercised purchase option, bought property; half owner along with Flint, Bixby & Co.;
- 1869-1877 – operated The Coast Line Stage Co. (ran from San Jose to San Diego); 1896 – company dissolved (Llewellyn Bixby’s death), properties separated: Flints retained the lands in the North, Bixby heirs kept lands in the South;
- June 13, 1896 – Jotham and Lewellyn Bixby) founded Bixby Land Company founded; operated dairies, built the first Sears store in the Long Beach area to accommodate automobiles (1928), built some of the first gas stations for General Petroleum, Shell and Texaco, and developed business parks, car dealerships, hotels and shopping centers;
- 1922 – Flint property on the San Justo Rancho dwindled to 2,400 acres, acquired by Mme. Leila Butler Hedges for $150,000.00; 2005 – shareholder election changed Bixby Land Company to Real Estate Investment Trust.
- 1866 —To have even more room to pasture sheep, Irvine, Flint and Bixby acquire the 47,000-acre Rancho Lomas de Santiago (most of Irvine north of Interstate 5 to the Santa Ana River) for $7,000. The land adjoins their Rancho San Joaquin. Much of the rancho was not suitable for cultivation, but did border the Santa Ana River on the north, thereby securing valuable water rights.The drought forced those landowners who survived the collapse of the cattle market to sell their property. Don José Andres Sepulveda and William Wolfskill were among those landowners who had to sell their land. In 1866, a business partnership comprised of James Irvine I, Llewellyn Bixby, Thomas Thomas Flint, and Benjamin Flint purchased Wolfskill’s Rancho Lomas de Santiago and a portion of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. Two years earlier, the four, who called their partnership Flint, Bixby & Company, purchased the nearby Rancho San Joaquin. Combining the three, their newly formed rancho (which for a time retained the name Rancho San Joaquin) included 125,000 acres (Liebeck 1990).Flint, Bixby buys Rancho Los Cerritos — Without Irvine, Flint, Bixby & Co. purchase Rancho Los Cerritos in Southern California from John Temple in March, 1866. Jotham Bixby is to run the operation and is given an option to purchase a half-share in the operation, (source: George W. Salzer, Los Alamitos, p.14.).
Flint, Bixby buys out Marcellus Bixby’s half of his and Jotham Bixby’s San Luis Obispo sheep ranching endeavor and then contracted with Jotham Bixby to move from San Justo to Los Cerritos with his wife, Margaret Hathaway (reportedly, the Hathaways are descendants of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of Longfellow’s “The Courtship of Miles Standish”).
Source: Adobe Days, Sarah Bixby Smith, p. 51
Again, it was joy to her to be near her two sisters, who lived on the neighboring ranches, Los Cerritos and Los Alamitos, and her father who had recently come to Southern California.
The three families were doubly related, — Hathaway mothers and Bixby fathers, Mary and Llewellyn, Margaret and Jotham, Susan and John. I have told of my father’s marriage to SarahHathaway. She was always a delicate girl and lived only six years after she came west as a bride. There were no children, much to the disappointment of them both. After an interval of six years father returned to Maine and married my mother, Mary, the little sister of his loved Sarah, who had, in the twelve years passed, grown to womanhood. When I came I was given the name of this beloved older sister and wife.
Before this time Jotham Bixby and his family had moved from San Juan to the Cerritos Ranch, bringing with them for company at the isolated home, his wife’s sister Susan, who in the course of time married the young cousin, John W. Bixby, newly come from Maine.
Jotham immediately begins stocking the ranch with sheep. By 1880 it would grow to at least 25,000 sheep which yielded 102,000 pounds of wool.
The purebred merinos were kept in sheltered enclosures near the ranch house, but the majority of sheep were pastured out on the range — divided into flocks of about 2,000 and placed under the care of a sheepherder. The flocks ranged all over the ranch, and several camps were set up at various points arund the ranch and supplied from the ranch house. the camps were usually a fenced enclosure with a cabin which “possesses a floor, a table, four chairs and four bunks, built against the walls after the manner of ships’ berths. There is a stove, but no window—the door answering the purpose of admitting the light by day and keping out the cold by night.” (Brokate, Bixbys p.22, citing Robert Duncan Milne, “Shepherds and sheep herding,” The Californian 1 (April 1880): 322. The supplies delivered to the Los Cerritos camps included, “maiul, tobacco, and food, brown sugar, coffee, flour, bacon, beans, potatoes, dried apples.” (Sarah Bixby Smith, Adobe Days, p.84)
The herding was tedious, difficult and lonely. Despite this, several Bixbyas started out their careers this way before moving on to other careers. In 1860 Augustus Rufus Bixby wrote to a younger cousin, S.M. Munson to discourage him from coming to California to tend sheep, citing the dangerous sea voyage, the low wages ($30 a month) for sheepherding, and the necessity of working every day regardless of weather conditions or holidays. “It is a dog’s life to tend sheep. besides it is very hard and wearing on a man. (A.R. Bixby letter to S. Munson Bixby, 1 March 1860. Transcript, Los Cerritos archives.)
Sheep Herding. In 1854, California produced only 175,000 pounds of wool; by 1870, the total had grown to 11,400,000 pounds. The industry reached its greatest prosperity during the Civil War, when the disruption of the national cotton trade created a huge demand for wool (Cleland 1941:139–141). Foremost among the pioneer wool growers in California was Flint, Bixby & Company. Llewellyn Bixby and his cousins Thomas and Benjamin Flint had driven their first flock of sheep from Illinois to California in 1853. In October, 1855, they established Rancho San Justo in Monterey County as their headquarters (Smith 1931:27–29). Between 1864 and 1866, Flint, Bixby & Company added Rancho San Joaquin to its holdings; with James Irvine’s financial support, the company grazed 30,000 sheep on 110,000 acres of the rancho by 1867 (Liebeck 990:6,10,11). Under James Irvine’s management, sheep raising on Rancho San Joaquin remained an important economic activity well into the 1880s.
Flint-Bixby buy interest in Coast Stage Lines
In 1866 Overland Mail Company sold its stage line from Sacramento eastward to Wells Fargo company and divested itself of the California operations. It was then that William E. Lovett of San Juan Bautista, brother-in-law of Lewellyn Bixby, became the new contractor for the route to Los Angeles. He called his operation “Coast Line San Juan and Los Angeles U.S. Mail Company.” Daily service became available to patrons of the San Antonio post office in 1867. The year before in 1866, Cock’s Station had changed hands and became known as Lowe’s, after its new owner James Lowe.
Flint, Bixby and Company, leading sheep producers of the San Benito Valley, purchased the Coast Line Stage from E. Lovett in January 1868. The inventory of stock and equipment listed a house, stable, a granary, grain and hay at Lowe’s Station, designated as “Last Chance.” At Jolon, not yet an official post office, the company owned a house, granary, hay and grain. As the railroad tracks were laid from San Francisco, the stage line began at the railhead, which became Gilroy, in October 1869. The railroad ran its first trains in to Salinas in the early fall of 1872, and almost without stopping the construction crews continued to lay tracks to the new community of Soledad, where they arrived and stopped in 1873. From this point the stagecoaches departed for Southern California during the next thirteen years.
Calabasas was a major stop on the stage route during the 1860s – (see Leonis Adobe)
- MAR 1866 – Benjamin Flint and Jotham Bixby are granted a franchise by the State of California to construct a telegraph line between San Jose south through San Juan, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles and El Monte to San Bernardino. Source: Statutes of California Passed at the … Session of the Legislature
By California, California; Published by J. Winchester, 1866
- in 1869, Jotham Bixby exercises an option to become half owner of Rancho Los Cerritos. He organized the firm of J. Bixby & Co., in joint ownership with Flint, Bixby & Co., to operate the ranch and other projects that might come along.
- 1870 – Articles estimating the cost of sheep raising at this time generally came to the conlusion that it was profitable. (Brokate, Kristen: Bixby Family and changes in land use in Southern California; 1992 thesis, p. 13. citing Socrates Hyacinth “A Flock of Wool,” Overland Monthly 4 (Feb. 1870) and Hayes, 490, 493-94. Colonel W.W. Hollister was later quoted as saying every one of those sheep earned him a thousand dollars before it died.” Theodore Hittel, History of California, (San Francisco, N.J. Stone and Co., 1897) 2, 881,
A later History of the San Francisco Bay region [History of the Greater San Francisco Bay Region, By Lawrence Kinnaird. Published by Lewis Historical Pub. Co, 1966, – Original from the University of Virginia, Digitized Feb 1, 2008 ] references a George A. Moore, — the “grandfather of the subject, George A. Moore, Sr., came to Hollister in 1857 with the Flint, Bixby Co. in charge of the sheep.”
According to Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region, By Sandy Lydon [Capitola Book Co., 1985]: The largest crew of Chinese farm laborers (14) worked on the Flint-Bixby Ranch outside San Juan Bautista. The farm laborers were all male …
Flint, Bixby & Co. among California’s largest landowners.
Paul Wallace Gates, Land and Law in California, p.318
More meaningful was the information secured from the State Board of Equalization. The figures may have been prepared as a result of the deep interest [Henry] George had aroused in land monopoly. They were featured in the Record, the Union and the Bee of Sacramento and nin thew Chronicle of San Francisco. Here for the first time were statistics of the great holdings then being established and subsequently to be much enlarged. The Record’s figures were presented by counties. (To find the total holdings of persons whose land was widely scattered one needs to search through the lists of numerous counties.) Disregarding the railroad land, the largest landholders were those of Bixby and Flint 334,000 acres, Miller & Lux 328,000; William S. Chapman and Associates 277,600; Edward F. Beale 173,000; Dibblee, Dibblee & Hollister 101,000 and Isaac Friedlander 107,000.
* The Flint-Bixby land at this time would include the San Justo/Hollister lands, the Huer-Huero in San Luis Obispo County, Rancho Los Cerritos, Rancho San Joaquin/Santiago (later Irvine Ranch),