Betty Lou Young and Randy Young Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk Through History Casa Vieja Press: Pacific Palisades, CA, 1997, 182pp., 1839
" . . . One of the lengthiest disputes in the history of the ranchos began in December 1839, when Francisco Sepúlveda applied for his grant for Rancho San Vicente, which adjoined Rancho Boca de Santa Monica on the north and east, and somehow included in it portions of all three adjacent ranchos. Two subsequent surveys went farther and placed all of Rancho La Ballona within the Sepúlveda grant, leading him to rename his enlarged property Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica.
. . . The Board of Land Commissioners . . .
"Baker established himself in Los Angeles and on September 3, 1872, purchased Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica, paying the heirs of Francisco Sepúlveda $55,000 for over thirty thousand acres. A year later, on August 14, 1873, he bought an undivided one-half interest in Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, without patent, for $6,000 from Maria Villa de Reyes. In 1874 Colonel Baker married the widowed Arcadia Bandini de Stearns, a major landholder in her own right . . .
"Baker was eager to resolve the boundary disputes between the two ranchos and to take possession of his land, but it was 1881 before the United States patent for Rancho Boca de Santa Monica was issued and signed by President James Garfield on July 21 . . . The case for partition remained to be settled and came before the court on July 6, 1882. In the meantime, Colonel Baker had sold a three-quarters interest in his landholdings to Senator John P. Jones of Nevada for $150,000, and the remaining one-fourth to Arcadia for $50,000, but asked that the partition be continued in his name.
" . . .
"On June 8, 1883, the Decree of Partition was filed giving the allotments. Robert Baker received 2,112.80 acres, including what is now the Riviera, upper Santa Monica Canyon, Rustic and Temescal canyons and the intervening mesa which would become the heart of Pacific Palisades.
"Each of the five surviving heirs of Francisco Marquez . . . received three allotments-a large parcel of agricultural land on the western mesas, several acres in lower Santa Monica Canyon for a homesite and crops, and a small parcel at the mouth of the canyon for commercial use . . . approximately 4,543 acres."