Quakes Shake Loose History of Pico Adobe

Historians always wonder what stories old houses would tell if their walls could talk.

At the 150-year-old Pio Pico mansion in Whittier, the walls do talk, thanks to earthquakes that opened them up and a restoration crew that kept them that way.

And it turns out that adobe walls cracked apart by the 1987 Whittier and the 1994 Northridge temblors have plenty of tales to tell about life 150 years ago in Southern California.

The quakes shook loose much of the thick, whitewashed plaster that covered interior walls. In some places, the old mud bricks themselves broke away, opening a window onto the past.

Researchers examining 2-foot-thick handmade adobe blocks were able to see how Pico’s workmen had done crude but effective seismic reinforcing by poking sticks, pieces of scrap lumber and other objects into the bricks.

Scientists analyzing bits of straw inside damaged bricks were able to determine the approximate date that the mud blocks had been molded for various additions to the rambling ranch house.

Historians examining the cracked walls discovered that some rooms had been replastered or refinished as many as six times. Remnants of long-hidden, fancy wallpaper were uncovered.

The quake damage helped expose hidden doors and windows that, for a century or more, had been covered over by remodeling projects. The buckling of one section of floor revealed a 19th-century subterranean foundation, which proved that part of the home’s back wing was an add-on.

Four months ago, state parks administrators completed a $2.1-million renovation of the place that Pico called “El Ranchito.” They decided to leave some of the walls unrepaired, so the layers of California history remain visible.

Some sections of scarred walls are highlighted with custom-designed plexiglass frames that almost turn the exposed adobe into artwork. Other areas are left totally uncovered. All help tell the story of Pio de Jesus Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, and of life at El Ranchito between 1852 and 1892.

“It has a lot to tell us in terms of the people who built it and the changing times it experienced,” said Jim Newland, state parks senior historian and Southern California supervisor of the agency’s Cultural Resources Section, who oversaw the project.

“It tells us stuff that does not come up in historical documents -- things not written down in Pico’s papers: ‘Today I decided to go with this Victorian wallpaper and teal paint.’ But it’s there to see, in little pieces, in little scraps of wallpaper and scrapings of paint.”

El Ranchito is now operated as Pio Pico State Historic Park. It is open without charge Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 6003 Pioneer Blvd.

Guided tours are available and visitors can view a short video on the life of Pico. He was born in 1801 at the San Gabriel Mission and helped shape nearly a century of California’s history before his death in 1894 in Los Angeles.

Raised poor, he rose to become one of California’s most powerful men. He was Mexican governor in 1831 and again from 1845 to 1848, when Mexico surrendered the area to the United States.

Later, he became a Los Angeles businessman. He built the city’s first major hotel, the Pico House -- which still stands near Olvera Street -- and was elected to the Los Angeles City Council.

Unable to speak or read English, “he was sometimes prey” to dishonest business partners, according to a state parks account of Pico’s life. Flooding from the nearby San Gabriel River wiped out part of El Ranchito in 1883, forcing Pico to borrow money to rebuild.

Stuck repaying the loan, Pico lost most of his nearly 9,000 acres of El Ranchito lands to subdividers before being evicted from his beloved adobe two years before his death.

Whittier residents helped save Pico’s house from being torn down in the early 1900s. One of them, Harriet Russell Strong, acquired the house and restored it in 1907. She gave the structure to the state in 1917.

These days about four acres of parkland surround the old adobe. In a $3.5-million companion project, the grounds were cleared and restored as fruit orchards and gardens.

“It looks as it looked in the 1880s,” said Fred Andrews, a historical interpreter for the state Department of Parks and Recreation. Among the features restored is an Old West-style wooden facade that Pico built on the front of the adobe to make it look more “American.”

The renovation convinced state experts that what they had assumed was the adobe’s dining room had actually been used by Pico as two bedrooms. Excavation beneath the floor disclosed the rooms’ foundations.

The dig, by state archeologist Herb Dallas, was left intact for visitors to see. Dallas and historical interpreters Nancy Mendez and Susan Doniger pressed for plexiglass flooring panels that allow visitors to view the foundation.

“People ask if we found gold or buried treasure,” Andrews said. “We didn’t find that. But we found pieces of plates, cattle bones that told what cuts of meat they ate, old skeleton keys for adobe doors and pieces of bottles. In a way we did find buried treasure.”

Adobe visitors say they appreciate the preserved cracks in walls and peeled-away plaster.

“I think it’s neat they show the framing and the pieces of wood and things mixed in with the adobe,” said Devon Brown, 19, of La Habra, who is studying construction at Fullerton College. “It tells a lot about how this place was built.”

Randall Van Duyn, 44, a pharmacist from Elgin, Ill., who has restored two Victorian homes near Chicago, was here on vacation when he took his parents to see Pico’s place. He said that leaving things un-restored is good -- “in limited amounts.”

His mother, Bonita Van Duyn, 76, said she had lived in the Whittier area since 1956 and had passed by the old adobe many times. “I never wanted to stop because it just looked run-down. But now it doesn’t,” she said.

Her husband, retired teacher Richard Van Duyn, 74, agreed. “I grew up in Indiana and we never studied California history,” he said.

But now, the walls of the Pico house are helping tell the state’s story. And people are listening.