Rancho Palos Verdes

Long before Rancho Palos Verdes became the newest city on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, it was part of Rancho de los Palos Verdes, a seemingly worthless patch of oceanfront hill covered in brush fit only for shore whalers, smugglers, and cattle. Through forfeiture and foreclosure, the Bixby family from Maine acquired the peninsula and made the land profitable by diversifying-ranching, sharecropping with American field farmers, and renting land to Japanese flower and vegetable growers. New Yor...