Glendale, L.A. County’s fourth largest city, is located in the San Fernando Valley in the foothills and slopes of the Verdugo Mountains, an area occupied for millennia by Tongvan societies until the arrival of Spanish explorers and colonists in the 18th century tore the world as they knew it apart.
The city of Glendale's contemporary history begins in 1798 when a Baja-raised Spanish Army corporal from the 1769 Portola-Serra Expedition named Jose Maria Verdugo was granted the Rancho San Rafael concession from Basque-born Governor of the Californias, Diego de Borica. This allowed Verdugo use of the land for his animals to graze on, as he had been doing for the previous 15 years after receiving an eight square league of the rancho from his army commander, Governor Pedro Fages, in 1784.
The 36,403-acre land bordered the Arroyo Seco on the east, the L.A. River on the south, and mountains on the west, and included today’s Atwater Village, Cypress Park, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Glassell Park, Garvanza, Glendale, La Canada Flintridge, Montrose, Verdugo City, and Mount Washington. The Verdugo name still frequently crops up in these places, on everything from mountain ranges and towns to contemporary beer bars.
Verdugo died in 1831. After briefly becoming part of Mexico, California joined the United States after the Mexican-American War, and the land grants were legally kept in place by 1848s Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This would confirm the land grant acquired by Verdugo’s son and daughter, Julio Antonio Verdugo and María Catalina Verdugo.