The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Fall 1989, Volume 35, Number 4
Thomas L. Scharf, Editor
by Dale Ballou May
Congress of History Award San Diego History Center 1989 Institute of History
While I was in California it was as if some yeast of memory were fermenting in me, bringing up the past and building images which I wanted to recreate…. All this continued to create in me a wish for a home of my own in a proper settings where the spirit of California could permeate the patios and the rooms and I could feel genuinely at home and not an alien, as I did sometimes in New York and in other cities where my stage career took me.1
Hidden among stately palms, wispy eucalyptus, and the towering yellow stems of flowering yucca, the coarse earthen adobe blocks of Rancho de los Quiotes cast a lazy spell over a secluded valley tucked in the rolling hills near Carlsbad, California. Built in 1937 under the care of Board-way character actor and Hollywood star Leo Carrillo, the time-worn adobe blocks of the “Ranch of the Spanish Daggers,” can leave today’s visitor adrift in the reverie of earlier times and faded traditions.2
A closer look beyond the nostalgic ambiance of the adobe buildings of Leo Carrillo’s Rancho de los Quiotes reveals that they represent more than one man’s attempt to embody the Hispanic heritage of the Golden State and bring alive the romantic and pastoral flavor of old California. They represent Carrillo’s interpretation of his past as well as how he used his surroundings to enhance his own activities. It is a mixture made possible by his rich imagination, his love for his heritage, and a career that brought him sufficient wealth to realize his ardent dream to create a home reminiscent of those built by his forefathers.
Equally important, however, the ranch buildings and the events that took place there remind us of the success of California boosters to popularize California’s Hispanic history. These promoters created a romanticized identity that became widely accepted at the turn of the nineteenth century as reality. It was an identity that one California historian has labelled “inventing the dream,” and the momentum of myth created by these early promoters was so widespread that many people accepted California’s dream identity without hesitation.3 To believe the promoters was to view old California as genteel and pastoral, populated by proud Hispanic families who by day delighted in the excellence of their horsemanship and by night sang to the gay sound of the castanets. It was the age of the Spanish Dons, a romantic period in California’s history that somehow survived in memory if not reality. It is likely that Leo Carrillo, along with many others, succumbed to the dream, and used his own version of the dream in his interpretation of Rancho de los Quiotes.4
Carillo’s ranch also represents something more tangible than the California dream. The buildings demonstrate a continuation of buildings traditions in adobe architecture that have been taught from generation to generation by skilled craftsmen throughout the Southwest. What remains of Rancho de los Quiotes and the setting Leo Carrillo so lovingly envisioned, now lie in the protective care of the City of Carlsbad’s Department of Parks and Recreation, pending future plans for preservation, restoration, and interpretation as a part of their community history.5
From his birth on August 6, 1880 in an adobe house on the Bell Block of Los Angeles,6 until his death in 1961, Leo Carrillo’s life reflected his family’s role in California’s early development. This heritage extended back to the late eighteenth century when soldiers and missionaries sponsored by Spain arrived in Southern California to establish the little town of San Diego as the birthplace of California’s mission system. Leo Carrillo’s great-great-grandfather, José Raimundo Carrillo was one of these early adventurers who in 1769 rode with Father Junipero Serra one thousand miles north to San Diego from Baja California to begin a new life for himself and generations of Carrillos yet to be born.7
Throughout Carrillo’s youth, his parent and relatives reinforced this awareness through the stories and recollections they exchanged during family visits. Young Leo heard the saga of José Raimundo Carrillo’s expedition to San Diego and the history of another relative, Pío Pico, the last governor of California under Mexican rule. He also learned about Pico’s brother Andrés. who bested General Stephen W. Kearny and his American soldiers at the Battle of San Pasqual in San Diego county, and tales of the adventures of his own father and uncles.8 The Carrillo children re-lived many of these family adventures in the fields where they played; imagining themselves costumed as elegant vaqueros riding alongside the leather-jacket soldiers, fighting mighty grizzly bears, and walking along the great “Highway of the Kings,” the El Camino Real.9
Carrillo took pride in his family’s role in California’s development, and in his later years he would promote this history in speeches he gave as the guest of honor at fund raising dinners, parades, and a wide variety of promotional events.10 The Carrillo family was not alone in its pride in California’s Hispanic history. In fact, Californians were embroiled in a widespread infatuation with California’s Spanish history and its Mediterranean-like shores that had begun at the turn of the century.
Early promoters has sensed the potential for future growth and profit in a concentrated effort to sell the Southland and both buyers and sellers found the allure of California’s Spanish heritage virtually irresistible. Bankers, newspapermen, land developers, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce had capitalized on an image of palm-lined lanes, picturesque orange and avocado groves, restful strolls in the ever-warm sunshine, and anything that was charmingly Spanish to attract tourists and potential customers to the state.11 The ballyhoo attracted thousands, and then hundreds of thousands of new residents to California; it also attracted a promising film industry whose imagery would surpass anything the chamber of commerce could have envisioned.12
By the time Leo Carrillo was a toddler, California’s new image was in full swing. By the time he was and adult, the western style ranch house had come to symbolize the pastoral essence of California’s early years and the architectural style had gained widespread favor in California and the Southwest.
Leo Carrillo’s dream to build an adobe ranch house was not unique in the 1920s and 1930s. General and specialized literature described ranch house plans, and current magazines capitalized upon, and perhaps even encouraged, the style’s popularity. Magazine article titles such as “Read What Happened to a Mid-Iowa Bungalow! Now a California Ranch-house,” “Modern Ranch House,” and “Modern Hacienda” advocated the ranch house as an attractive home design. In fact, the style became so popular that architect Cliff May became famous for his western ranch house designs, adapting them to the needs of individual clients.13 Adobe, the architectural and aesthetic ranch house building block, was the fashionable medium for home construction in this period. Articles such as “I Wanted an Adobe House,” “Romance of the Adobe,” and “Mansions of Mud” suggest the popularity of the building medium.14
By the 1920s, Leo Carrillo had established himself as a successful Broadway stage actor with many New York stage hits to his credit.15 By the mid-1930s, he had expanded his career into films. The 1930s were glitzy and glamorous, the so-called “Golden Era” in Holly wood, and it was a time when prosperous movie and stage stars built elaborate homes both as personal retreats and entertainment showcases, often mirroring the fashionable architectural trends of the period.16 With his new-found wealth, Carrillo was able to afford his own retreat and showcase where he could entertain his family and Hollywood friends.
Rancho de los Quiotes was one of the two ranch-style adobe homes Leo Carrillo built in California. The first was constructed under Carrillo’s direction in the 1920s in the city of Santa Monica, not far from an area where he had played as a child.17 Made from baked adobe bricks from a nearby kiln, the ranchita, or little ranch, featured beamed ceilings, fireplaces, and other characteristics Carrillo recalled from the Spanish ranches of his youth.18 He named the ranchita “Los Alisos, “after the Sycamore trees that dotted the canyon where the home was located. Los Alisos was smaller than Los Quiotes, and served the Carrillo’s as their primary home.19
Rancho de los Quiotes was the family’s second home, surrounded by a vast spread of acreage that Carrillo proudly owned. Unlike the Santa Monica residence, Los Quiotes was a full-scale working ranch and weekend retreat where Leo Carrillo raised cattle and crops in the tradition of his California forefathers.20
According to Carrillo’s memoirs, it was a lucky discussion in a Lancaster, California duck club one evening that led to his acquisition of Rancho de los Quiotes. An informal conversation with his friends Irvin S. Cobb and Sterling Hebbard eventually led to musings of favorite hideaways and retreats, far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Carrillo’s vivid description of his dream ranch where he could entertain his friends, ride horses, and round up and brand his own herd of cattle, stayed with Hebbard long after the evening’s end. When Hebbard learned of the availability of an old adobe in the small coastal town of Carlsbad just north of San Diego, he invited Carrillo to visit the property and look over the remains of the ruined adobe house.21
There is no evidence that Carrillo sought out the body of popular and specialized literature on ranch homes and adobe construction for architectural advice on how to build either Los Alisos or Ranch de los Quiotes.22 In fact, part of the legacy of the Carlsbad ranch lies in the tale of how Carrillo simply paced off the buildings and instructed his construction crew to place a room here and a patio there, using the adobe ruins as the focal point for his new home.
In light of Carrillo’s construction inexperience, it was fortunate than an experienced carpenter had heard of Carrillo’s intent to build an adobe house and was available to help with the construction. The man was Cruz Mendoza, a former resident of New Mexico who was then living in Vista, California.Mendoza and his three sons, Laurance, Richard, and Cruz, drove out toCarrillo’s property to offer their skills in plastering, woodworking, and carpentry.With their assistance, Carrillo went to work building the rancho he so greatly desired.23
The Mendozas used materials from the Kelly home for repairs and a three block wooden form to mold the adobes.24 They first constructed the main building, then a cantina, barn, an Indian House, and finally a foreman’s house. Leaving instructions for his crew for the week, Carrillo would return to his ranch is Santa Monica to continue with his filming and stage engagements while his wife and daughter returned on weekends to pay the workers and supervise the construction. At times Carrillo gave specific instructions, and at other times he left the details up to the skills of the carpenters.25 In his autobiography Carrillo wrote:
I don’t know the size of the rooms because I stepped off and put a stake at the corner and squared it off and said, “Put a room here, put a room here, put an arch over there, and we’ll take these old bedrooms that are still standing and clean’em up and make a living room out of the two front bedrooms. Then the old dining room we’ll turn into a kitchen.”
We did it.
These men-these wanderers-did a magnificent job. Their carpentry work was perfect, the stone work was artistic, the plastering excellent, all done on small chicken wire.26
By July 24, 1939 the builders had completed the main house. Carrillo celebrated the event with a ceremony led by the padre from nearby San Luis Rey Mission. The San Diego Union described the dedication ceremony as one “re-establish[ing] Carrillo on the broad acres his forebears once tilled, in a home that is a replica of the family’s early-day ranch house.”27
Very little evidence exists today to verify the extent to which Rancho de los Quiotes replicates any of the ranch homes Carrillo knew as a child. But if Carrillo used his memories of the ranchos he visited as a youth to help him interpret Rancho de los Quiotes, it is likely that an old adobe ranch owned by his great-uncle “Tio” Andres Machado provided a great deal of his inspiration. The similarities between the two ranches are striking.28
In his memoir, The California I Love, Carrillo described the crumbling white plastered adobe walls that were built around a patio in the traditional ranch style. There he had heard the sound of the old iron triangle that was suspended from the covered porch outside the kitchen and used to signal that onset of breakfast and the beginning of ranch activities for the day.29 Carrillo had played around the bantam chickens, roosters, horses, and cows while peacocks displayed their beautiful feathers while strutting through the Machado orchards. The evening entertainment made an equally vivid impression on Carrillo as he witnessed the fluid, colorful dancing and singing that were accompanied by castanets and guitar music. These fiestas were part of a grand hospitality that welcomed scores of relatives, guests, and the elite families of California.30
At Los Quiotes, Carrillo brought in peacocks and chickens to wander through his gardens as he and his family baked bread in outdoor ovens. A metal triangle located outside his kitchen door summoned the family together to dine, just as it had rallied the Machados at Tio Andre’s adobe.31 Carrillo became famous for his grand hospitality and lavish barbeques where mariachi bands entertained guests from Hollywood and friends and neighbors from Carlsbad. Rodeos, roundups, and barbecues attracted many, and the responsibilities of the working ranch no doubt kept numerous hired hands actively employed.32
Interviews with Carrillo’s daughter Antoinette after his death give some of the best insight into life at Los Quiotes. In a 1978 interview with Randy Johnson for Westways magazine,33 Antoinette spoke of visits by such stars as Clark Gable and his wife Carole Lombard, Duncan Renaldo, and child star Jane Withers. Carrillo’s lively entertainment and hospitality were well known, as was his skilled horsemanship. His rodeo corral and bull pen were often the site of demonstrations in horsemanship and according to one of the Mendozas, Leo Carrillo was very happy when there was this kind of activity going on at his ranch.34 It is not surprising that the well-liked actor took such great enjoyment in the entertainment of Hollywood’s elite at Rancho de los Quiotes, just as his ancestors had delighted in hosting their own ‘gente de razon’ of Spanish California. Carrillo’s image as California’s grand host would become so successful that he would earn the title “Mr. California” in an identity he would himself term the “reincarnation of the caballero.”35
In addition to the elements that Carrillo’s imagery and Hollywood lifestyle gave to Rancho de los Quiotes that add to its distinctive flavor, there are a number of other significant features that may make the ranch historically and architecturally unique to Carlsbad. These features are distinctive to New Mexican adobe architecture, and they add an unusual element to Rancho de los Quiotes because they clearly represent an architectural style that has been borrowed from the traditions of another geographic area.36
It seems clear that the Mendoza family was more than the wanderers Carrillo implied in his memoir. They lived and worked in Southern California and were actively involved in adobe construction throughout the area. The construction skills the father brought from New Mexico and passed to his sons were expressed in other homes and buildings in Southern California. Mendoza’s New Mexican background may be important because his influence may have introduced architectural features not previously used by local builders.
Certainly between Carrillo’s direction and the Mendoza’s carpentry, there became a blending of dream and reality within the architectural style. Perhaps much of this blending of style lies in the latitude Carrillo gave the carpenters to continue construction while he was away working on films.37 This latitude can be seen in the main ranch house, the building that served as Carrillo’s home and center for entertainment.
The one story, U-shaped, structure is highlighted by its wavy red tile roof and bright, white plastered walls. The living room features distinctive rounded corner fireplaces at both ends of the room.38 The smooth lines of the bell shaped fireplaces hint at New Mexican influence, as these corner fireplaces are typical of those in many adobes of early nineteenth century Taos, New Mexico and other areas in the Southwest outside of California.39
A patio lies sheltered outside the walls of the two side wings of the house, partially covered by an overhanging veranda that in the summertime lends shade to cool the hot afternoon breezes. From the patio, Carrillo and his guests could have taken a few short steps down into the foliage-filled backyard, or with a few more steps, gazed into the large fishpond in the lower yard. Other guests may have walked further still around to the back of the house where they would have found a large swimming pool that, according to an article written by Randy Johnson in 1978, once came complete with its own shore of imported beach sand.40 The brooding countenance of a brightly painted totem pole once stood guard over the immense pool, but today the totem pole is gone and the cracked and empty pool now holds only a reflection of its former elegance.41
Outside the front entrance to the house, peacocks and peahens strut across the large dirt parking lot where guests and family once parked their cars and trailers while visiting the Carrillos.42 One side of the lot is flanked by a double garage, cantina, and tack and feed rooms. A close look at the axe cut ceiling and support beams shows that they had been burned to accent the rustic nature of the wood grain.43
At the far end of the parking lot, directly opposite the main ranch house, stands one of the most prominent of the ranch buildings. This unusual, split level adobe barn contained the stables and bunk room.44 Stalls for Carrillo’s horses were located on the lowest of the three barn levels, adjacent to a rodeo corral and bull pens. The large pitched roof once protected wagons and carriages, and in one corner of the upper level Carrillo had the Mendozas build a bunk room where often special guests were invited to stay.45 On cold evenings, Carrillo’s guests and ranch hands would have been comforted by a warm fire in the dome-shaped cement and cobble corner fireplace.
Up on a hill just to the south of the main house stands one of the most unusual of the ranch buildings; a small dwelling labeled “Deedies House” which was constructed in 1940 as a hideaway for Carrillo’s wife.46 The flat roofed white stucco adobe looks as if it might have once been a New Mexican trading post, with pueblo-style beams protruding outside the upper walls. A cow skull affixed above the front entrance peers solemnly down upon visitors. The light bulbs that protrude from the long deceased bovine’s eyesockets add a note of levity to its sun-bleached countenance. Cartoons and caricatures etched into the plaster of the outside walls add a folksy character to the building. Known as a talented cartoonist, Leo Carrillo is reputed to have made the caricatures himself.47
Just as Carrillo’s hand can be seen in the drawings on the walls of Deedie’s House, so too can his hand be seen in all of the other buildings of Rancho de los Quiotes. For the multi-talented actor and son of California forefathers, the identity of the Spanish Don and tales of California’s yesteryears seemed best represented by the rich character of the old adobe buildings around which he had been raised. He found the essences of life-earth, sun, and water-molded as one into each block of adobe. Even more so, he found a beauty and humbleness in the character of adobe that satisfied a personal interpretation of those things he found valuable in life.48 In his memoirs, Carrillo summarized these feelings and his life at Rancho de los Quiotes with this fond recollection:
These adobe walls nurture me as they did in that hour of my birth, when the good doctor asked my mother my name and she pronounced it for the first time so proudly:
“Leopoldo Antonio Carrillo.”
I have ridden in many parades, I have trod many a stage. Applause has been mine. I have seen the far places of the earth. Many dreams have come true.
Now, here on the Rancho of the Spanish Daggers, the past, the present and the future flash their many-prismed mirrors before my eyes. The ever-lasting hills are my proscenium. The vaulted sky is my roof. The stars lean down to pronounce their benediction…..
Now, amigos, perhaps you understand why the adobe is my birthstone….49
On September 10, 1961 the popular and well-liked character actor who embodied so much of the California myth lost an eight-year battle with stomach cancer. He died in his Santa Monica home at the age of eighty-one.50 Like the melting of the adobe that formed the walls of Carrillo’s rancho, the years following his passing have eroded the splendor of Los Quiotes.
Today, the buildings of Rancho de los Quiotes speak for themselves. The white-washed adobe walls mirror forty-one years as a working ranch and retreat for the Carrillo family. Leo Carrillo’s self-termed reincarnation as a Spanish caballero demonstrates the effectiveness of the California myth that made popular the romantic image of Carrillo’s haciendas and the festive life of days gone by. These influences seduced Carrillo, just as they led a receptive public into accepting a public myth that made old California an attractive and charming pastoral paradise. Certainly life on California’s ranchos of the early 1800s had its own special character, much of which has been glamorized by endless inspection and romanticization. Carrillo’s response to these influences was only a part of a broader acceptance throughout California to adopt this myth as California’s essential identity. Had it not been for Hollywood’s marketing of fantasy, Carrillo might not have been able to fund both the ranches at Santa Monica and Carlsbad. No doubt the training he received as an actor allowed him to fit easily into his role as a Spanish Don.
But more than this, Rancho de los Quiotes represents a blend of California myth, Hollywood showmanship and stage setting, and the use of authentic Southwestern building traditions to create a representation or interpretation of the past. The Mendoza’s architectural craftsmanship demonstrates the continuation of centuries-old adobe construction techniques. It is this blend of myth, fantasy, and tradition that enhances the character of Rancho de los Quiotes, far beyond the attraction of the adobe and red tiled roofs. Rancho de los Quiotes, its builders, residents, employees, and guests share in the California myth and Carrillo’s dream, taking their place in the local history of Carlsbad and the broad history of California.
1. Leo Carrillo, The California I Love (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), p. 221. Carrillo wrote his memoirs sometime between 1955 and 1961. His co-author was Ed Ainsworth, a journalist who wrote several books on the American West and spent many years covering feature articles on California history for theLoss Angeles Times. The degree to which Ainsworth’s journalistic hand and factual knowledge of California history influenced the organization of Carrillo’s material and the telling of his life story is unknown.
2. Leo Carrillo was an accomplished stage and film actor whose career spanned more than 50years. He first appeared on stage in a vaudeville performance in 1913. He was 33 years old. He began his career in films in 1927 when he was 48 years old and performed in nearly 100 films by the time he was 70 years old. Ever youthful, in 1951 he again shifted his career, this time into television. He starred as “Pancho” with Duncan Renaldo as “Cisco” in the popular television series “The Cisco Kid.” It is for this role that Leo Carrillo is today most frequently remembered; Carrillo, California, pp. 274-275. The term “Spanish Daggers” refers to the flowers of the yucca cacti that can be found growing around the ranch. “Rancho de los Quiotes” is the Spanish translation of this term. See also “Carrillo [sic] Ranch Pancho’s Hideaway,” San Diego Union, June 25,1978.
3. Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1985). This book provides a detailed analysis of the influences that shaped Southern California’s character from the mid nineteenth century through 1930. To a great extent Rancho de los Quiotes can be best understood in the context of Starr’s broad analysis. See also Max Miller, It Must be the Climate (New York: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1941) p. 37
4. Ibid.; Carrillo, California, p.221.
5. Carlsbad Journal (Calif.) “Historical Group Seeks Grant for Carrillo Ranch,” August 16, 1986; Terry Snoeyenbos, “$90,000 Carrillo Ranch Grant Expected to be Ok’d,” Carlsbad Journal, April 15, 1987; Lori Sherman, “Carlsbad Agencies Join to Consider Options for 10-Acre Carrillo Ranch,” The San Diego Tribune, August 13, 1987; Lori Sherman, “New Roles Urged for 10-Acre Ranch Once the Home of Actor Leo Carrillo,” December 17, 1987; Mari Andersson, “The Greening of Los Quiotes,”1984, San Diego Historical Society, Carrillo (Rancho Los Quiotes) collection, p. 2.
6. “Leo Carrillo,” promotional pamphlet describing Carrillo’s career, no date, (Carrillo Collection, Carlsbad City Library); Johnson, Pancho’s Retreat, p. 40; David Ragan, Who’s Who in Hollywood, 1900-1976 (New Rochell, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976), p.570; Leslie Halliwell, The Filmgoer’s Companion (New Rochell, N.Y.: Hill & Wang,1974), p. 110; David Quinlan, The Illustrated Directory of Film Character Actors (Lon-don: B.T. Batsford, Ltd., 1985), pp. 54-55.
7. Carrillo, California, 14-20.
8. Ibid., pp. 32-37, 14-20.
9. Ibid., p. 14.
10. San Diego Union, August 14, 1938, July 28, 1940, November 29, 1951, May 20, 1956.
11. Judith W. Elias, Los Angeles: Dream to Reality (Northridge, CA: Santa Susana Press, 1983) pp. xiii-xv,2.
12. Elias, Dream to Reality, p. 65; Starr, Inventing the Dream, pp. 288-297.
13. Arts and Decoration, January 1938, H. R. Kelley, “Modern Ranch House,” Good Housekeeping, March 1935, p. 72; H. I. Shaw, “Modern Hacienda,” Better Homes and Gardens, January 1937, pp. 19-19; and Cliff May, Western Ranch House, (San Francisco, CA: Lane Publishing Co., 1946). See especially the description of ranch house on pp. ix and 25; Cliff May, Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May, (Menlo Park, CA: Lane Publishing Co., 1958).
14. V. Fincke, “I Wanted an Adobe House,” Arts and Decoration, October 1937, pp26-28; T. Connor, “Romance of the Adobe,”Overland August 1924, pp. 349; J.L. Von Blon, “Mansions of Mud,” Scientific American, February 28, 1920, p. 218.
15. By 1923, Carrillo’s name blazed across marquee lights in theaters in Chicago and New York. His role as Tito Lombardi in “Lombardi, Ltd,” was a great success, and the play toured all over the U.S. Samuel L. Leiter, ed., The Encyclopedia of the NewYork Stage,1920-1930, A-M, N-Z (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp:553, 358-359, 789; Who Was Who In Theatre 1912-1976, (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978), p. 390; Weldon Durham, ed., American Theatre, Companies: 1888-1930, (New York, NY: Greenwood Press; 1986), p. 301; Leiter, Encyclopedia, 520; Carrillo, California, pp. 194-195, 216, 222; Durham, American Theatre, p. 301.
16. Quinlan, Illustrated Directory, pp. 54-55; Jim Heimann, Out with the Stars: Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era (New York: Cross River Press, 1985), pp. 33; Starr, Inventing the Dream, p. 335.
17. Carrillo, California, pp. 221-222.
18. Ibid., pp. 222-223.
19. “Leo Carrillo,” promotional pamphlet. Statement regarding Los Alisos are located in the Biography section of this pamphlet. For a good overview of Leo Carrillo and the history of Rancho de los Quiotes, see Randy Johnson, “Pancho’s Retreat,” Westways, August 1978, pp. 38-41, 80. This article also refers to Los Quiotes as the Carrillo family’s weekend retreat. The conclusion that Los Alisos was the family’s main house is drawn from these two sources.
20. Carrillo, California, pp. 226-230, 278.
21. Ibid., p. 227; Grant Deed, Official Record Book number 635, page 333, file number 18384 (County Recorder’s Office, San Diego.); Carrillo, California, p. 227; On April 13, 1937 Carrillo and his wife Edith purchased 1700 acres of the estate from Charles and Lavina Kelly for $17.00 an acre. Two years later the Carrillos would add another 837.99 acres to the rancho. “Carrillo [sic] Acquires Encinitas Rancho,” San Diego Union, March 14, 1937, p. 7 column 5; Johnson, “Pancho’s Retreat,” p.30. For information on the second purchase of land see Grant Deed, Official Record Book number 868, page 44, file number1445, January 12, 1939(County Recorder’s Office, San Diego.) Edward and Nettie Kelly (husband and wife) sold Lot B of Rancho Agua Hedionda to Leo and Edith Carrillo.
22. Marje Howard-Jones, “The Carrillo Ranch Lives Again,” no date or newspaper origin identified on clipping. Howard-Jones suggests in this article that recently found engineering books and drawings at the Lose Quiotes might have been used by Carrillo to build the adobe. Information obtained from Cruz Mendoza, however, suggests that the construction may have happened just as Carrillo wrote in his memoirs; Cruz Mendoza, Fallbrook, California, to Dale Ballou May, May 2, 1988, letter in the possession of the author.
23. Mendoza to May, (May 2, 1988), p. 1.
24. Ibid., p. 2.
25. Ibid., p. 4. Patricia Schaechlin, “Where an Actor’s Dream Came True: Leo Carrillo’s Carlsbad Ranch Will Be a Park,” San Diego Home and Garden March 1980, pp. 84-90. This article provides a good overview of the history of the ranch and Carrillo’s career; Gil Davis, “Portrait: Carrillo Ranch: Leo Carrillo Ranch an Historic Site,”Oceanside Blade-Tribune, June 6, 1972.
26. Carrillo, California, p. 228.
27. San Diego Union,July 24 1939, p. 7
28. Carrillo, California, p. 44, 47, 276.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 276.
32. Johnson, Pancho’s Retreat, p. 39.
33. Ibid., p. 40.
34. Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), p. 5.
35. Carrillo, California, p. 219.
36. Bainbridge Bunting, Taos Adobes: spanish Colonial and Territoral Architecture of the Taos Valley, (Santa Fe, N. M.: Fort Burgwin Research Center Museum of New Mexico press, 1964); Trent Elwood Sanford, The Architecture of the Southwest, Indian, Spanish, American, (New York: W. W. Norton, & Co., Inc., 1950).
37.Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), p. 2; Joe Skymba, The Carrillo Ranch City of Carlsbad Parks and Recreation Department Audio Visual Department of the Carlsbad City Library, videotape, [1975-1977?]. Personal conversation with Joe Skymba indicates that the film was made sometime between 1975-1977. The videotape shows the interior of the ranch house, depicting, among other things, antique wooden furniture, a massive bed, old spinning wheel, spoon collection, water tower, iron gates, arches, an old carriage, the totem pole, pepper and eucalyptus trees, a Shakespeare grandfather clock, the Indian House, portraits of Carrillo’s ancestors and pictures of Edith Carrillo.
38.Much of the description of the buildings comes from the author’s own inspection. For further description, however, see Johnson’s article, “Pancho’s Retreat,” Schaelchlin “Where an Actor’s Dream Come True,” Andersson, “Greening o f Los Quiotes, ” and Guard D. Gunn, ” Rancho de los Quiotes: Leo Carrillo Dueno, ” The southern California Rancher, (January 1945), p. 12.
39. For additional information on adobe fireplace construction, see Myrtle Stedman, Adobe: Remodeling & Fireplace, (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sunstone Press, 1986); and Paul Graham McHenry Jr., Adobe: Build it Yourself, rev. ed (Tucson: The university of Arizona Press, 1985).
40. Johnson, “Pancho’s Retreat.”
41. Skymba, The Carrillo Ranch videotape.
42. Johnson, “Pancho’s Retreat.”
43. Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), P.2.
44. Carrillo, California p. 275.
45. Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), p. 3.
46. Carrillo, California p. 275; Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), p. 3.
47. Mendoza to May (May 2, 1988), p. 3.
48. Carrillo, California, p. 280. For a general description of Carillo’s fondness for his Rancho de los Quiotes, see pages 273-280 in his, The California I Love.
49. Ibid.
50 San Diego Union, September 11, 12, 15 & 16, 1961; Antoinette Carrillo and Carrillo’s brother Ottie were present at his bedside when he died. The funeral services were held at St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church in Santa Monica on Spetember 14, 1961. Leo Carrillo was buried in Santa Monica at the Woodlawn Cemetery.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS on page iv, 233, 234 and 243 are from the San Diego Historical Society’s Title Insurance and Trust Collection. All others are courtesy of Michael Nabholz.
