Ben Marcus Rules

LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

May Rindge Deals With Squatters: 1930.


Way back when, through the first half of the 20th Century, citizens and visitors to Venice and Santa Monica frolicking on the beaches and the piers and along the bluffs might look west at the Santa Monica Mountains looming and lightshowing over the Pacific Ocean all the way out to Point Dume on a clear day and think: “One woman owns all of that.”

“All of that” was the 13,300-acre Rancho Malibu Topanga y Sequit, aka The Malibu Rancho, aka the Malibu, aka the private principality of one woman - that woman: Rhoda May Knight-Rindge. She owned all of it - everything you could see out to Point Dume, and then all the way around the corner to the Ventura County Line. It was as if one woman owned the entire Palos Verdes Peninsula. A huge chunk of increasingly valuable land during a time when the population of Los Angeles was booming, and the economy was alternately booming and imploding: People were getting rich, people were going without.

And that caused problems, the thought of one woman owning so much while so many others had little to nothing - and those thoughts inspired several of the Seven Deadly Sins: Envy, jealousy, anger, greed and lust for land.

Those emotions came to a head after the stock market crash of 1929, when the Depression set in and the huddled masses of Los Angeles who followed the rainbow to Los Angeles all of a sudden found themselves fishing for barracuda and stealing from fruit trees to survive.

Out of the Roaring Twenties and into the Depressing Thirties, SoCal citizens became increasingly desperate for the necessities: Food and shelter. 

Sound familiar? Plus ca change, plus le meme as the Frenchies say. The more things change, the more they stay the same. You think Malibu has a problem with squatters and homeless and bedouin RV campers now, May Rindge dealt with the same problem almost a hundred years ago.

Almost a hundred years ago, real estate dealers could be unscrupulous - believe it or not - and some underhanded agents in Los Angeles persuaded gullible citizens that the Rindge claim on some or all of the 13,300-acre Malibu Rancho was illegal, and all they had to do was march up the coast and claim their piece of paradise by planting a stake in the ground (and through the heart of May Rindge.

This all happened seven months after the stock market crashed in October of 1929. David K Randall summed up the temper of the times in his most-excellent The King and Queen of Malibu: 

“A fortune that had long seemed limitless disappeared slowly and then all at once, erased by payments on the bonds May issued just a year earlier. New York had never felt so close to Los Angeles, so ready to stomp on a person’s dreams. More than the financial panic, however, the upper crust of Los Angeles feared that a lower stock of people would migrate west from the Dust Bowl and spoil their paradise by the sea. The All-Weather Club, an organization of businessmen formed to promote year-around tourism in the city, began running national advertisements that warned, “Come to Southern California for a glorious vacation. Advise others not to come seeking employment lest they be disappointed.” 

[The early 20th Century version of Take Your Trash, Leave Your Cash.]

Families shuffling along the lines for soup kitchens searched for someone or something to give them a glimmer of hope. All those untouched hills of Malibu, just on the other side of the fences, provided a target too tempting to resist. In June 1930, nine months after the crash, an army of more than one hundred squatters tore down the barbed wire lining the Roosevelt Highway and raced onto the Malibu ranch. Each of them carried a typewritten piece of paper stating that, as Malibu had once been a Spanish land grant, Rindge had illegally taken land that should have been set aside for homesteading and they were now here to reserve a plot.”

David K Randall summed up the response in King and Queen of Malibu: 

May’s foreman lead armed guards on horseback to meet them in the ranch canyons and, hoping to avoid a shootout, placed a call of the sheriff’s office. A truck carrying a team of policemen arrived shortly after thee in the morning carrying tear gas and a sheaf of warrants. Twelve squatters were arrested, including four husband-and-wife pairs., It was soon revealed that all one hundred members of the invading army each paid $2,500 [2019$38084.13 x 100 = righteous bucks!!!!] to a lawyer who’d promised that he could successfully challenge May’s title to the property, a position that the registrar of the General Land Office called foolhardy to the extreme.

But the whole scam was bollocks. By 1923, May Rindge’s claim to the land had been thoroughly scrubbed in  courts from the county to the state to the Supreme Court level. The land belonged to the Rindge family and while the Supreme Court had deemed it lawful to run a county road and then a Federal highway through the property, no one had the right to show up with a stake and claim the land for themselves. The land belonged to the Rindges.

It was a scam, and the LA Times said so on June 17, 1930 under the title RINDGE RANCHO WARNS RAIDERS.

Charges that a ring of “land sharks” demanding advance fees for filing claims induced more than 100 squatters Saturday night to invade beach areas of the vast and historic Rindge estate in an organized attempt at claim-jumping were made yesterday by counsel for the Marblehead Land Company, which controls the great area.

Marc F. Mitchell, attorney for the company, declared that the title to Spanish land grants in California, and particularly the Malibu or the Rindge estate, is unassailable, and the attempt to reopen the question of title is futile.

Brainerd B., Smith, register of the local United States Land Office, declared the wholesale claim-jumping “foolhardy,” and the title of the property held by Mrs. May K. Ringe, present owner of the domain beyond dispute.

ATTEMPT “ILL ADVISED”

“Those persons attempting to claim the beach land have been ill-advised,” Register Smith said. “By whom I do now know, but as to their proposed filings, they have no standing with the government. In the areas they have chosen to take and land below mean high tide is State property and above that mark is approved absolutely by the government.

“The present owner’s title to the property is beyond dispute. Only government lands can be homesteaded; therefore, if this land is not government domains, squatters have no right there.”

No effort was made by any of the squatters yesterday to make formal filings with the Land Office and even so, Smith said, the filing could not be accepted.

“SCRAP OF PAPER”

Seven of the squatters, however, awaited the opening of the doors of the County Recorder’s office so that they might file their claims under the assumption that he old Spanish land grants provide homesteads for ex-soldiers - but their filings can go no further, officials say.

“They merely have scraps of paper on file,” Register Smith said. “Which are worthless.”

The regular procedure for filing on homesteads is in the United States Land Office, county officials said, and the county has no jurisdiction in the matter whatever; the mere recording of the claims does not in any sense make them valid.

James Westervelt, counsel for some of those who staked claims said last night that the group has ample funds to continue a civil fight for the land, and that a program of long-standing is to be carried out. He disputes with the officials that a Senatorial inquiry has settled the matter, and contends that the original Spanish grants did not apply to beach lands.

ALL QUIET ON RANCH

Throughout yesterday all was quiet on the twenty-one-mile front between Las Flores Canyon bridge and the Ventura county line, where the squatters - men and women - moved in under the cover of night and threatened to hold their claim stakes by violence. Deputy sheriffs dispersed the gathering after arresting twelve of the claim-jumpers for trespassing.

The twelve persons were at liberty yesterday on bail of $10 each pending trail at 10 a.m on the 23rd inst, before Justice of the Peace Webster of Malibu township. The warrants were  signed by guards of the Rindge estate who met the first wave of squatters with drawn guns.

“The Marblehead Land Company has been aware for some time,” Attorney Mitchell said in a statement. “That a group of misguided people were again attempting to reopen the question of title to the Malibu land properties, which has been settled for years by the highest courts of the nation.

“The company feels that once more innocent people are being duped by a ring of land sharks who know as well as we do that the title to Spanish land grants in California, and particularly the Malibu are unassailable. As long as these ring-leaders can obtain advance fees for mere filing of claims, it seems likely that this practice will continue, although nothing to support their contentions has ever been placed before a court of any government agency of investigation.”

“These men have nothing with which to support their claims and they know it. The only interest they have in the matter is to obtain money from those who do not know any better.”

LACK OF EVIDENCE

“The utter failure of those seeing to cloud title, not only to the Malibu rancho, but many other properties in the Southland, to place a single piece of evidence that they had a legal claim before the Senate investigating committee last year was final proof that such efforts as those on Saturday night are not to be taken seriously.”

“And those who are constantly being swindled out of their saving should begin to learn by this time that those who advise them for a fee are only interested in the fee. The Marblehead Land Company has owned the rancho for forty years. All those who attempt to force entrance to its lands are trespassers and there is nothing it can do but treat them as such.

“We are sorry to see that three or four of these men are veterans of the World War. It is unfortunate that men who have given so much to their country have been induced by unscrupulous people to lend their good name to such a cause.”

But the Marblehead Land Company - controlled by Mrs. Rindge - proved to be full of the milk of human kindness - or perhaps they didn’t want to be distracted by suing a mob of gullible squatters.

David K Randall summed up the response in King and Queen of Malibu: 

May’s foreman lead armed guards on horseback to meet them in the ranch canyons and, hoping to avoid a shootout, placed a call of the sheriff’s office. A truck carrying a team of policemen arrived shortly after thee in the morning carrying tear gas and a sheaf of warrants. Twelve squatters were arrested, including four husband-and-wife pairs., It was soon revealed that all one hundred members of the invading army each paid $2,500 [2019$38084.13 x 100 = righteous bucks!!!!] to a lawyer who’d promised that he could successfully challenge May’s title to the property, a position that the registrar of the General Land Office called foolhardy to the extreme.

On June 24, 1930, the LA Times reported: 

RINDGE INVASION CASES DROPPED

Twelve Asserted Squatters Escape Prosecution

They’re Disappointed Due to Loss of Test Wedge.

Attorney for Company Hits at Raid Instigators

SANTA MONICA, June 23 - Charges of trespass filed a week ago against twelve of the small army of squatters which posted notices of settlemen, under the act of May 14, 1880 on the morning of the 15th inst. on the entire twenty-three-mile ocean frontage of the Malibu ranch were dismissed by Justice of the Peace Webster of Malibu township when the cases were called at Las Flores this morning.

The unexpected action, which was clearly a disappointment to the defendants in the courtroom, came immediately after Judge Webster had read the complaint. Marc F. Mitchell, attorney for the Marblehead Land Company, the organization through which Mrs. Mary K. Rindge handles all business matters connected with the huge, historic Malibu rancho, rose and asked permission to make a statement.

ADVICE OFFERED

He said that although there had been what he termed “a preconceived and considered movement to move in upon privately owned land,” the company he represented feels that some of the 136 person who had filed claims were sincere, apparently badly advised and seriously misled. Mitchell declared his company was not disposed to prosecute them.

“Such prosecution.,” he stated “should be directed against those inspiring and leading this conspiracy.” He then offered to give some facts and advice if the defendants were disposed to heed.

William H. Kerr of Oxnard spokesman for the defendants, who apparently were without legal counsel in court, rose and asked whether his group wanted to listen to Mitchell. Judge Webster interposed and declared the court was disposed to listen and that all in the courtroom should do likewise.

Mitchell then said: “There is no land along the Malibu ranch, on the ocean boundary, which is not privately owned. None of this is government land. The United States government has not even attempted to claim and of it and even if such a claim had been made, the people in the present case would still be guilty of trespass because the proper procedure in opening government-owned lands is for the government to advertise in the newspapers when and where they shall be opened for public entry. Not until such advertisement has been duly run has anyone the right to file claims.”

Mitchell asked dismissal of the cases, stating that in view of the conspiracy against ill-advised persons, his company had no desire to prosecute. Kerr promptly rose and declared he and his co-defendants wished to enter in the record pleas of not guilty to the trespass charge, but Judge Webster stated that since the prosecution had withdrawn its charge, no necessity for entering a plea remained. He dismissed the cases and ordered bail, in the sum of $10 each, refunded by county warrant.

PAIR ABSENT

Of the twelve defendants, only Mr. and Mrs. Thomas R. Ashton were absent. Kerr said the Ashtons had not been actual entrymen, but had been at the ranch last Sunday as friends of others who filed claims.

The court’s action was a disappointment to the “squatters” members of the group admitted. They had hoped to get their claims against the Malibu property into court through the comparatively insignificant trespass charge Just what their next move would be, none would reveal.

That flurry of land sharks and squatters and crashers - oh my! - passed like a quick snow flurry of trouble, but the 1930s were just getting started for May Rindge - and they were the beginning of the end for the Rindge Dynasty in the Malibu Rancho.

The following year - 1931 - would be a true annus horriblis for May Rindge, as her land agent Haorld Ferguson would be swept up in a land deal scandal involving Las Flores land sales - a scandal that would throw Ferguson into prison and cast a deepening pall over the Rindge name and fame and claim.

The trial for Ferguson began in September. On November 13, the LA Times reported that Malibu potteries had been swept by a fire of unknown origin. Fanned by winds the fire caused $50,000 to $75,000 damage - the equivalent of $500,000 to $750,000 in modern dollars.

May Rindge was a decent but stubborn woman beset on all sides by the tyrannies of evil men, their ambitions fanned by the Seven Deadly Sins just as the Devil Winds fanned the flames that consumed Malibu Potteries.

It was the Depression that killed the Rindge claim to the 13,300 acre Malibu Rancho and in 10 years, Mrs. Rindge would leave the earth, leaving what little she had to her children and to anyone else who had a stake in her interests, she left $1.