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After a serious flood destroyed his first house in Whittier, Pio Pico's finances became increasingly meagre. To pay his sizable debts, (Pico loved to entertain and gamble), he was forced to accelerate the sale of land from his once huge 8,891 acre rancho. Swindled out of most his land by an American lawyer, Bernard Cohn, Pico was evicted from his property finally in 1892. He lived the final two years of his life with an adopted daughter, Joaquina Moreno.

Pio Pico State Historic Park tel: (562) 695-1217 (2006);

Long neglected, this house house was considered a ruin in 1904. A friend of Pio Pico's, Mrs. Harriet Russell Strong, bought the ramshackle house after the turn of the century and began renovating it in conjunction with a new group, the Governor Pico Mansion Society and Museum Association, one of a number of preservationist groups that began to appear in the 1880s and 1890s, dedicated to restoring landmarks of Mexican and early Anglo-California. In 1917, Mrs. Strong left the house and grounds to the state, which, ten years later, converted the property into Pio Pico State Historic Park, today one of the oldest in the California State Park System.

PCAD id: 6471