Rancho La Puente

Father Juan Crespi noted in his diary that the expedition had to build a bridge ("la puente") to cross the stream because the channel was so miry.

Made in July 1845, the grant extended the size of the rancho to the maximum allowed under Mexican land law, eleven square leagues, or 48,790.55 acres (197.4484 km2).

[10] After the conquest of the Mexican department of Alta California by the United States during the Mexican-American War, the article of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which would have provided that Spanish and Mexican-era land grants be honored, was stricken at the insistence of President James K. Polk and Congress.

[13] With the patent secured and La Puente's owners approaching their seventies, the two decided, in 1868, to formally partition the rancho, leaving the two men exact allotments of hill and valley land, so that Rowland mainly occupied the northern and eastern part and Workman the western and central portions.

[14] Rowland, who returned to New Mexico in 1842 to bring his family back to California, built an adobe on the north side of San Jose Creek the following year.

William Workman, whose family accompanied him to California, lived in a temporary shelter through the winter of 1841-42 and then constructed an adobe the following summer, believed to have been three rooms.

Workman, also a highly successful cattle rancher and farmer, entered business activities (real estate, oil, and banking, among others) with his son-in-law, Francisco P. Temple (F. P. F.), and the two were the wealthiest individuals in Los Angeles County during the first half of the 1870s, during which the first growth boom experienced in the region took place.

The remaining historic sites left from the rancho era are the Workman House (1842 adobe and 1870 brick additions), El Campo Santo Cemetery (1850s with 1919-21 renovations), and a water tower (ca.

1880s)--all on the grounds of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum and the John A. Rowland House (1855), now undergoing long-awaited renovations under the auspices of the Historical Society of La Puente Valley.