3 Battles That Forever Changed the Southland

Four miles south of what was once the small pueblo of Los Angeles, amid the slaughterhouses and bustling factories of contemporary Vernon, sit three ordinary-looking boulders.

The thousands of commuters speeding by pay them little heed. But these inconspicuous rocks commemorate a 153-year-old event that changed California’s history: the desperate Battle of Los Angeles.

Sometimes known as the Battle of La Mesa, it was the last of three brief but bloody encounters fought on Los Angeles area soil during the Mexican-American War.

In 1846, as the fighting between the two countries raged, the American flag was initially raised without resistance in Los Angeles, which had still been part of Mexico. On Aug. 13, Navy Commodore Robert F. Stockton and Maj. John C. Fremont pulled out of the city, leaving soon-to-be-Capt. Archibald Gillespie in charge.

It was a big mistake.

Gillespie favored martial law over the parties and music that formed so much of the pueblo’s communal life. He strictly enforced a draconian curfew, subjected the citizenry to indiscriminate arrest and banned four things dear to the hearts of the Californios: meetings, weapons, liquor and galloping horses.

Angeleno women responded to Gillespie’s tyranny by presenting him with a basket of peaches in which they had embedded all-but-

invisible cactus spines. It took him a full week to get the sting out of his mouth.

For the dour Gillespie, worse was yet to come. A force of 300 armed Californios took him and his 50-man garrison by surprise and demanded an unconditional surrender.

Before he capitulated, Gillespie secretly dispatched a courier named John Brown--also known as Juan Flaco (Slim John)--who carried a plea for help written on cigarette papers, which he rolled into his curls.

When the American flag was lowered, Gillespie and his men hiked south for San Pedro to await reinforcements.

After the first ship arrived, the march to retake Los Angeles began with 350 heavily armed but tired U.S. sailors and Marines making their way north.

As they headed up what is now Alameda Street, the Americans were deceived by the outnumbered Californios, who herded wild horses back and forth across Dominguez Hills, kicking up as much dust as they could and making it impossible for the Americans to guess their enemy’s actual numbers.

The next day, Oct. 8, a force of fewer than 200 poorly armed Californios--their only heavy weapon an ancient brass cannon recovered from retirement as an ornament in Inocencia Reyes’ garden--advanced on horseback, headed by Andres Pico.

They engaged the Americans on the Dominguez Rancho in the vicinity of contemporary Alameda Street, south of Del Amo Boulevard in Carson. The fight would go down in local history as the “Battle of the Old Woman’s Gun.”

With it mounted on a makeshift, horse-drawn cart and secured with long ropes, the Californios pulled their fieldpiece through 6-foot-high wild mustard. It let loose ear-shattering booms and 4-pound lead balls.

The battle ended after less than an hour, with four dead and eight wounded. The sailors and Marines, horseless, withdrew and walked back to the harbor.

Before sailing out of the harbor to find Commodore Stockton, Gillespie buried his dead on a hill at the mouth of San Pedro Harbor, known thereafter as Deadman’s Island.

(In 1929, Deadman’s Island was removed to widen the port’s entrance and eliminate navigational hazards. At that time the remains of the four Marines and sailors were removed and reburied elsewhere.)

With Stockton stuck on a sand bar in San Diego Harbor and Fremont in Monterey to secure men, guns and horses, Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny arrived in California with about 100 dragoons, after leading an expedition from Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., that had included a stop in Santa Fe., N.M., which he had occupied.

In the rainy predawn hours of Dec. 6, the Californios confronted the Americans again in the bloody Battle of San Pasqual, in which both sides claimed victory. The 30-minute engagement near Escondido left 22 Americans dead, 18 wounded and at least a dozen Californios wounded. A subsequent battle followed atop a nearby hill, where Kearny and his men held out for four days, eating their pack mules to survive, before help arrived.

As they left the battlefield, the Californios were attacked by a band of Luiseno Indians and lost 11 men.

Determined to recapture Los Angeles, Kearny joined forces with Stockton--Fremont would join them later--and marched north.

On Jan. 8, 1847, more than 500 reinforced Californios watched from a 50-foot embankment above the San Gabriel River as 600 Americans with their flags rippling and their rifles held high splashed across the knee-deep river near present-day Montebello.

The Californios’ first cannon shot fell short. The second flew over the Americans’ heads.

The Americans took cover against the river’s west embankment as they exchanged gunfire. Meanwhile, one of the Americans’ four heavy cannons was hung up in quicksand amid the willows and mustard on the river’s east bank. While Stockton’s men provided cover, he helped pull the 9-pounder to safety.

Within half an hour, the Californios’ guns fell silent. The Americans rose and swarmed up and over the embankment. The Californios charged in one long line with their red blankets, black hats and bright sabers glittering.

An hour and 20 minutes later, the Americans had taken the bluff and silenced the enemy’s guns. Both forces totaled about four dead and 16 wounded. In celebration of the victory, the Navy band struck up “Hail, Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle.”

(Two cannons and a plaque at Bluff Road and Washington Boulevard in Montebello pay testimony to the Battle of San Gabriel.)

With no means to pursue their well-mounted opponents, the horseless Americans camped along the river bluff within sight of their enemy, about a mile distant.

On Jan. 9, the next morning, the Californios lay in wait about six miles away, near the pueblo’s stockyards at present-day Downey Road and Packers Avenue in Vernon.

After 15 minutes of exchanging cannon fire with the invaders, the Californios made a horseshoe formation and surrounded the Americans. The Californio cavalry, 10 horsemen wide, three rows deep, released blood-curdling shrieks as it charged in what became the final battle for Los Angeles.

“Steady! Pick your men, boys. . . . Fire!” shouted Kearny.

“Front rank, kneel!” he commanded, as the second rank rose, took aim and fired. Horses and men tumbled to the ground. The American formation held. When the smoke cleared 2 1/2 hours later, the Americans had five wounded men. At least one Californio was dead and 20 to 40 more were wounded.

The next morning, Jan. 10, William Workman carried a flag of truce and surrendered the Californios’ “dear City of Angels.” Los Angeles had fallen for the second and last time. A peace treaty was signed three days later.

All that remains to recall how all that followed was made possible is three big rocks that now sit in front of Vernon City Hall.