Page 9 - hssc1929parks

142 Historical Society of Southern California

habitants were using horses and wagons. At one time while
working with his oxen and cart hauling a load of hay, his
cousin, Francisco Palomares, made the remark, 'Why don't
you buy a wagon and use horses?' 'Oh/ said he, 'when wagons
come down to one dollar each, then I shall buy one/ Later
there was a drawing, the lucky number winning a wagon,
each chance selling for a dollar. Carrion bought a chance
and won the wagon. So he really did get his first wagon
for one dollar.
"Ramón, the eldest son, married Ricarda Alvarado, a
near descendant of Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado of Cali-
fornia. Rosa married Ramón Vejar, a grandson of Don Ri-
cardo of Rancho San José de Abajo."1
This eldest son of Don Saturnino is declared to have
been a great horse trader, and when his sisters drove out of
a Sunday afternoon from their father's adobe home, to jaunt
among the San José hills, it was always behind the finest
horses of the valley.

La Casa de Don Ricardo Vejar
A few miles south and west of Pomona, on the old Rancho
San José de Abajo, stands the imposing adobe hacienda of
adobes in all
Don Ricardo Vejar, one of the finest two-story
California.
situated on a little knoll, looking out toward
Beautifully
the rolling hills to the north, with the rugged, piebald form
Don Ricardo's house
of the Rocky Hills as its background,
of the road, as one goes eastward
stands far to the right-hand
on Valley Boulevard, on the grounds of the Diamond Bar
Ranch. It is spared and protected,
though not occupied, by
the present owner. More than any other of the old ranch
houses this one has the air as of a castle, surveying from a
eminence the vast domain of its old-time builder.
well-chosen
This house is a splendid example of the Southern Cali-
adobe ranch house of the
fornia adobe mansión, the two-story
Mexican era. Its walls are two and one-half feet thick, re-
inforced, so they say, by iron rods laid lengthwise between
the layers of adobe brick. The ground plan forms an elon-
1. Ibid.