From Southland Adobe to the State Capitol

Not far from where the waters of the Rio Hondo empty into the Los Angeles River, a cluster of neatly kept mobile homes stands guard over a clapboard-covered adobe within whose walls one family made the transition that all of California went through--from Mexican power to Yankee.

This sleepy Bell Gardens trailer park protectively surrounds a 200-year-old house that was home to two California leaders: Antonio Maria Lugo, a Spanish soldier’s son who became mayor of Los Angeles, and his great-grandson-in-law, who would become governor of California, Henry Tifft Gage.

Lugo’s 29,000-acre rancho covered much of southeast Los Angeles County, and at its center was the adobe, Casa de Rancho San Antonio. But by the time Lugo’s great-granddaughter married Gage, her portion of the land in dowry was only 27 acres and the adobe house.

It was here that Gage, a maddeningly stubborn, handsome man, began to build his own family, and a political career that would carry him to become the 20th governor of California.

Gage came to California from Michigan when he was 21, with a brand-new law degree in his satchel. Though a lawyer by profession, he was a cowpoke by nature, and he quickly decided there was more money to be made in sheep dealing than in the law.

But three years later he began to tend a two-legged flock. In 1877, hanging his hat and his shingle, Gage took Southern Pacific as a client. The state’s richest and most influential men--Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins--ran California through their railroad, and the patronage of the “Big Four” would set Gage’s career on the rise.

In 1880, breaking the tradition that old Californio families all wed at La Placita, the plaza church, the 27-year-old Gage married 17-year-old Francisca “Fannie” Rains in front of a justice of the peace. Gage steadfastly refused to become a Catholic until 10 years before his death. The only witness to the marriage was Fannie’s mother, Merced, who had owned Rancho Cucamonga.

Gage’s marital connection didn’t hurt his career, and the next year, he was elected Los Angeles city attorney. In 1882 he bought the Red Rover Mine near Acton. His son, Francis, would later rename it the Governor Mine in honor of his father. After the elder Gage died, it became Southern California’s most productive gold mine, yielding more than $1.5 million worth before it closed.

Knowledgeable about the land, Gage warned residents not to build homes too close to the Los Angeles River because of flooding. He advised farmers to let their sheep graze in the dry riverbed to clean out the undergrowth of willows, just as water engineer William Mulholland had once proposed.

A windmill stood on the Gages’ land, and in the floods of the winter of 1889, Gage climbed to the top and watched the river rise three feet in 30 minutes. The next year, when the river swelled to flood stage, Gage got in his rowboat and rescued a neighbor family, cutting an escape hole in their roof.

His old client, Southern Pacific, never forgot his work, and in 1899, when he ran for governor as a Republican, he had the secret support of the Big Four. But even with their backing, his term was rocky.

When he took office, a newspaper printed an anonymous editorial cartoon of railroad tycoon Collis P. Huntington leading Gage around on a leash. Gage retaliated by signing the “anti-cartoon” and “signature” laws, which required any newspaper article or cartoon challenging the integrity, honesty or reputation of any individual to be signed.

When bubonic plague broke out in San Francisco’s Chinatown the next year, Gage, joined by the local press and officials, tried to hush up the matter. When the city health department imposed a quarantine, Gage appealed to President William McKinley to rescind the quarantine--which McKinley did. An investigation confirmed the plague.

In his 1901 address to the state, Gage said Californians, “in view of their prominent seacoast with respect to the ports of the Orient, have reason to dread the immigration of Chinese and Japanese laborers into this state.”

As the first governor to mediate a major labor dispute, Gage met the threat of a general strike in San Francisco by saying he would impose martial law if both sides did not compromise. Then, disguised as a stevedore, he went down to the waterfront to assure himself that no violence was brewing.

Yet his passion for the land led him to create California’s first public land trust. He signed a state check for $250,000 to preserve 3,500 acres of redwoods near Santa Cruz, now known as Big Basin Redwoods State Park.

When he was not renominated in 1903, Gage retreated to his Bell Gardens sanctuary, far from the political hurly-burly of Sacramento. He liked to work at home, raising livestock, cultivating oranges, grapes and walnuts and spending time with his wife and children.

He resumed his law practice, and was often hired as a special prosecutor in criminal cases. His chief adversary was fabled defense attorney Earl Rogers. In January 1904, Gage took the case against the city’s most generous parkland benefactor and its most reviled villain, Griffith Jenkins Griffith, accused of shooting his wife during a drunken tirade.

Gage escorted Christina Griffith carefully to the witness stand, where she sat with a long, heavy black veil covering her face. When the moment came, Gage asked her to lift her veil so the jury could see the damage her husband had inflicted.

When she didn’t move, Gage reached over and pulled the veil back. The spectators gasped: There was a red scar and an empty eye socket on the once-beautiful society matron’s face. Griffith was doomed.

The only time Gage and Rogers were on the same side, they convicted the onetime family chauffeur of Los Angeles oil magnate Charles A. Canfield of the coldblooded murder of Canfield’s wife.

In 1907, Gage’s mother-in-law, Merced, died, and her ebony coffin replaced the family piano in the parlor. Gage’s wife took nosegays of violets--Merced’s favorite flower--and laid a path of them through the house for hundreds of mourners.

In 1909, William Howard Taft appointed Gage ambassador to Portugal. The press got wind of the fact that Gage had ordered 14 pairs of custom-made boots before he departed, and in a humorous send-off, Life magazine ran a two-page cartoon of Gage carrying a long pole on his shoulder with 14 pairs of boots strung along it like a hobo’s stick and bindle. Few people knew that inside his boot, Gage always carried a Bowie knife.

In Portugal, he caused another stir. As future Americans in foreign royal courts would do, Gage refused to wear the customary court attire of short dress pants and tights. “No, that’s out. I will not appear in Lord Fauntleroy pants. I’ll wear my own pants or, by golly, I’ll go home,” Gage roared. He met the king in a black tie, long pants and his favorite footwear--boots.

But six months after taking up his post, he abandoned it and returned home with his ailing wife. He spent the next four years with 16 other attorneys, litigating the complicated estate of eccentric millionaire Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin.

Gage had added two wings to the 1810 adobe, for his wife’s family, whom he loved. The Gages lived there until they moved to West 54th Street shortly before he died in 1924.

Fannie remained on 54th Street, leaving the Gage mansion unoccupied and ripe for looters, who took everything, including the bathtub. Several sheriff’s deputies trying to get a drop on the thieves once surrounded the mansion. But a deputy dropped his loaded revolver and it discharged, killing a constable and tipping off any would-be burglars.

The adobe, one of the oldest surviving houses in the area, was bought by the Casa Mobile Home Co-op, which uses it as a clubhouse, and it was declared a state historic landmark in 1991.