Rancho Boca de Santa Monica

The 1839 California Land Grant—A History

by Ernest Marquez / foreword by William Deverell

Rancho Boca de Santa Monica: The 1839 California Land Grant—A History is the long-researched story—in words and a plethora of remarkable images—of the land where its author Ernest Marquez was born, a land bestowed upon his ancestors by the Mexican government, long before California became part of the United States of America. After hearing anecdote after anecdote, versions of history passed down from generation to generation, Marquez set out to discover the true story of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica. That was more than 50 years ago, and his pursuit continued day after day.

The quest led him to libraries throughout the West, to the National Archives in this nation’s capital, and to archives, private collections, and of course, the Hall of Records in his own Los Angeles. It meant translating documents from Spanish to English, making sense of legalese from centuries past, and researching the provenance of the images and texts he found. All this, in search of the truth.

Ernest Marquez has earned the respect of academic historians for this work. In the words of William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, who wrote the foreword to Rancho Boca de Santa Monica, “Self-trained, a one-man research library of an archivist and historian, Ernie assembled a breathtaking collection of 11,000 photographs...That same kind of stewardship and regard for who came before us animates this book...It isn’t just the product of a single lifetime’s work. It’s all those other lifetimes woven into its pages, all those family members who lived across so much change.”

160 pages
100+ images
9"h x 9"w
hardcover; ISBN 978-1-62640-093-1; $40.00

(This book is not sold in stores; order online from Angel City Press)