nm urn 







llGRicuLTURAL enterprise in the career of Captain 

 Hancock bears the stamp of his pioneer heritage. Like his parents 

 and grandparents, he long harbored a love for the soil. In his 

 youth he learned to follow the plow on historic Rancho La Brea. 

 In one way or another he has kept at it ever since. 



Rancho La Brea was all but engulfed by the phenomenal 

 growth of Los Angeles and Hollywood during the first two decades 

 of the century. Its rolling plain became the site of fine residential 

 sections. Its dusty lanes became great business thoroughfares. 

 Towering office buildings line boulevards which once were mere 

 trails bordered by wild mustard. Nowhere else in the world has the 

 transition from virgin soil to a teeming metropolis been so rapid. 



More than two thousand acres of choice ranch lands were 

 enveloped by the city and Captain Hancock began to cast about, 

 more or less, for elbow room; for other suitable soil which he 

 might develop. He found it in the Santa Maria Valley, seventy- 

 five miles north of Santa Barbara. There he has developed Rose- 

 mary Farm and La Brea Rancho, helping to create a center of agri- 

 culture which has come to be known as "The Valley of Gardens." 



Glowing accounts of the fertility of the soil and abundance of 

 life in the Santa Maria Valley illuminate the writings of early 

 explorers. Sebastian Viscaino paid such high tribute to the valley 

 that he may well be suspected of some exaggeration. But historians 

 of Caspar de Portola's expeditions were hardly less enthusiastic. 

 From the diary of Padre Crespi and the notes of Portola's recorder, 

 Miguel Constanso, one gathers the impression that native Chumash 

 Indians were enriched by productivity of the soil and had developed 

 the highest culture known among coastal tribes. 



Historians picture the Chumash as living in the midst of plenty 

 and sharing nature's bounty with numerous deities through sacri- 

 ficial ceremonies romantically colorful and often fantastic. In- 

 scribing ecstatic accounts of the richness of the valley, explorers 

 attribute the peaceful hospitality of the tribe to inherent con- 

 tentment. 



White men came and went in hordes along El Camino Real 



during the excitement of the gold rush beginning in 1849, but it 



was not until 1867 that the first white settler sunk his stakes in 



65 the soil of Santa Maria. A townsite was laid out in 1875 and was 



