Ballona Creek - History

History

During the Pre-Columbian era, Tongva people existed as hunters and gatherers in small villages throughout the Ballona Creek watershed and other parts of the Los Angeles basin. Native American culture faded with the arrival of Spanish explorers. Around 1820, a mestizo rancher named Augustine Machado began grazing his cattle on the Ballona wetlands and claimed a fourteen-thousand acre Mexican land grant that stretched from modern-day Culver City to Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica. Ballona Creek and Lagoon are named for the Ballona or Paseo de las Carretas land grant, dated November 27, 1839. The Machado and Talamantes families, co-grantees of the rancho, heralded from Baiona in northern Spain. After the land grant claims were lost, the area then experienced rapid growth, with open land being transformed into agricultural use.