A portrait of Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, circa 1885. She was known as the wealthiest woman in Southern California. | USC Digital Library. California Historical SocietyTo Read the entire article please hit here
This story is published in collaboration with Picturing Mexican America.
During Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker's time, everyone knew her name. Rich, beautiful and connected, she threw the best parties, associated with the most important people in early California and helped make Santa Monica and the west side of Los Angeles what it is today.
But most people don't know much about the woman who donated land in Santa Monica including the area around Palisades Park. Even Oscar de la Torre, who has walked by the bronze sculpture of de Baker in his hometown park's rose garden many times. He's one of only a handful of Latinx to have ever served on the Santa Monica City Council. Not only did he not know her history, "I never knew she was Mexican."
In a city known as much for its whiteness as it is for its beautiful beaches, Santa Monica wasn't always that way. Before the Santa Monica Freeway ripped the city in half and sent large numbers of Latinx and Black families to other parts of Los Angeles, there was a bustling, diverse community with Latinx accounting for 20 to 25% of the population in Santa Monica, according to the Los Angeles Times. Long before that, the area and the rest of California was part of Mexico. And going back even further, it belonged to Indigenous Californians.
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Les Uniques Social Club initiation ceremony of new officers at the Buckman home in Santa Monica, 1954. | Persil Lewis. Courtesy of the Quinn Research Center
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When de Baker arrived in Santa Monica, there wasn't a lot there. Her story begins decades before California became part of the United States after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848.
She was born in 1827 into one of the most powerful families in elite Mexican California. Her mother María Dolores Estudillo's father served as Commandant of the Presidio of San Diego and two of her brothers served as alcalde (mayor) of San Diego and the other as alcalde of San Francisco. De Baker's father, Juan Bandini, came to California after his own father José Bandini, a Spanish naval captain, switched allegiances and fought with Mexico in the Mexican War of Independence from Spain. Juan became a well-connected landowner and politician who switched his allegiances away from Mexico to the United States when the U.S. declared war with Mexico.
