Pio Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California

Abstract

Pío Pico (1801–1894) was an important figure in California during the Mexican era (1821–1846). As governor during the American conquest and a well-known businessman in Los Angeles after the U.S.-Mexican War, he was an important transitional figure in nineteenth-century California, and his name is now attached to, among other things, a major Los Angeles boulevard, a school, and an apartment complex. This work is the first full-scale biography of Pico. The book is fairly equally divided into a consideration of the Mexican period and the post-1850 American period. Descended from members of the 1776 colonizing expedition of Juan Bautista de Anza, Pico came of age during the time when Spanish rule was giving way to Mexican independence. He served in the territorial legislature, was granted extensive lands, and became a leading figure in southern California. He was appointed commissioner of Mission San Luis Rey after it was secularized. Carlos Manuel Salomon demonstrates that as commissioner, Pico cared little about the Indians whose livelihood he was supposed to ensure. Pico was an active figure in the factional struggles that plagued California during the 1840s and that prevented effective resistance to the American invaders. He fled to Baja California and Sonora during the war but returned to Los Angeles in 1848.