Elvera K. Lack; Landowner’s Daughter

Elvera Keating Lack, the last of eight children of Andrew J. W. Keating, who at one time owned 64,000 acres between West Los Angeles and Santa Monica, died Sunday in Brentwood where she had lived much of her life.

She was 102.

Mrs. Lack--who was married first to John A. Forthmann, son of the founder of the Los Angeles Silk Co., and later to George M. Lack, a Brawley real estate developer--inherited with her mother, brothers and sisters the acreage on which Culver City sits today.

After Keating’s death in a shipwreck in 1901 the land--situated roughly between La Brea Avenue, La Cienega Boulevard, Pico Boulevard and southwest to today’s Marina del Rey--was tied up in court for several years until the youngest child turned 21. (Two of Keating’s sons died in the shipwreck with him.)

The family gradually sold it between 1911 and 1920.

Perhaps the most significant parcel was 93 acres of barley fields purchased by Harry Culver for a $2,000 option. Culver City was later incorporated in 1917.

Keating was British by birth and a Chilean nitrate magnate by profession when he purchased in 1892 what came to be known as Rancho Bonita Meadows. The Keating family used it originally as a winter home.