Jose Antonio Machado has been dead for...

Jose Antonio Machado has been dead for 127 years, but his admirers apparently endure.

Machado took up residence in 1825 on the east shore of a muddy lake, later known as Machado Lake, in what is now Wilmington.

Today, some harbor-area history buffs want the lake--renamed Harbor Lake in 1971 when the City of Los Angeles dedicated it as a park--to once again bear Machado’s name.

“Not many people know that the Machado ranch adjoined the lake,” said Kenneth D. Malloy, a San Pedro resident who is leading the name-change drive. “There was no reason to change the name in the first place.”

On Friday, harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores asked the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks to look into the Machado Lake idea, although she earlier told a reporter that she had no idea who Machado was.

“I always thought the lake was called Bixby Slough,” Flores confessed.

Not so, said Malloy. Bixby Slough was actually a bog just north of the lake. A common mistake, he said.

Machado, whose claim to fame was that he married the widow of Jose Dolores Sepulveda and took control of his property, deserves to be recognized for protecting the Sepulveda ranch, one of his descendants said last week.

“I think he has often been overlooked,” said Rudecinda Lawrence LoBuglio, his great-great-great-granddaughter, who was born and raised in San Pedro and now lives in Northern California.