Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden occupies 127 acres at the heart of historic Rancho Santa Anita, a spring-fed and fertile property that began as an outpost of Mission San Gabriel and became a major agricultural and showplace estate under Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin. After buying 8,500 acres of Rancho Santa Anita in 1875, Baldwin expanded his holdings into a vast land empire across the San Gabriel Valley while developing Santa Anita during his thirty-five-year tenure as both a working ranch and a premier Southern California show place. When Baldwin died in 1909, he asked that his Santa Anita home site be permanently kept, and his daughter Anita upheld that wish until the Great Depression forced the sale of Rancho Santa Anita in 1936 to a real estate syndicate headed by the Chandler family. Although subdivisions soon reduced the property, the historic importance of the land and Baldwin buildings near the lake was recognized, leading to California State Landmark designation for Baldwin’s Adobe home and his guest house, later called the Queen Anne Cottage. In 1947 the Chandlers sold the property below market value to support the creation of an arboretum, and Los Angeles County, with state support, purchased it; a year later a private Arboretum Foundation was incorporated to aid development, preservation, and programming. The site remains a blend of history and horticulture, preserving the legacy of Santa Anita and its connection between people and the land.
