Monomania L.A.: Ernest Marquez and Rancho Boca de Santa Monica

 

In this land of newcomers and transplants, Ernest Marquez can trace his California lineage back further than most. Born in 1924 on land that the Mexican government granted to his great-grandparents in 1839, Marquez has devoted much of his life to documenting a family history that began in 1771, when his great-great-grandfather Francisco Reyes arrived here as a soldier in the Spanish army. Since he began his research decades ago, Marquez has amassed a trove of more than 4,600 photographs—now part of the collections of the Huntington Library—that show the transformation of his family’s Rancho Boca de Santa Monica into the coastal communities we know today as Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica.