Pío Pico

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Pío de Jesús Pico
26th Governor of Alta California
In office 22 February 1845 – 10 August 1846
Preceded by	Manuel Micheltorena
Succeeded by	John Drake Sloat (military governor)
16th Governor of Alta California
In office 27 January 1832 – 16 February 1832
Preceded by	Manuel Victoria
Succeeded by	José María de Echeandía
Los Angeles Common Councilman
In office 1853–1853
Personal details
Born	(1801-05-05)May 5, 1801 Mission San Gabriel Arcángel San Gabriel, California
Died	September 11, 1894(1894-09-11) (aged 93) Los Angeles, California
Spouse(s)	María Ignacia Alvarado
Relations	Andrés Pico
Profession	Entrepreneur, politician

Pío de Jesús Pico (May 5, 1801 – September 11, 1894) was a Californio rancher and politician, the last governor of Alta California (now the State of California) under Mexican rule. He served from 1845 to 1846, he was also elected to one term (1853) on the Los Angeles Common Council.

Early years[edit]

Pico was a first-generation Californio, born in Alta California to parents who emigrated from the part of New Spain that is now Mexico, he was born at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel to José María Pico and his wife María Eustaquia Gutiérrez, with the aid of midwife Eulalia Pérez de Guillén Mariné. His paternal grandmother, María Jacinta de la Bastida, was listed in the 1790 census as mulata, meaning mixed race with African ancestry,^[1] his paternal grandfather, Santiago de la Cruz Pico, was described as a Mestizo (Native American-Spanish) in the same census.^[1] Santiago de la Cruz Pico was one of the soldiers who accompanied Juan Bautista de Anza on the expedition that left Tubac, Arizona for California in 1775 to explore the region and colonize it.^[2] Pio Pico and his siblings were thus of Spanish, African and Native American ancestry.

Marriage and family[edit]

After the death of his father in 1819, Pico settled in San Diego, California, he married María Ignacia Alvarado there on February 24, 1834. His younger brother was General Andrés Pico.

Business life[edit]

John Bidwell, an early California settler, mentioned Pico among the people he knew:

Los Angeles I first saw in March 1845, it then had probably 250 people, of whom I recall Don Abel Stearns, John Temple, Captain Alexander Bell, William Wolfskill, Lemuel Carpenter, David W. Alexander; also of Mexicans, Pio Pico (governor), Don Juan Bandini, and others.^[3]

By the 1850s Pico was one of the richest men in Alta California. In 1850 he purchased the 8,894-acre (3,599 ha) Rancho Paso de Bartolo, which included half of present-day Whittier. Two years later, he built a home on the ranch and lived there until 1892, it is preserved today as Pio Pico State Historic Park. Pico also owned the former Mission San Fernando Rey de España, Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores (now part of Camp Pendleton), and several other ranchos for a total of over 500,000 acres (200,000 ha).

In 1868, he constructed the three-story, 33-room hotel, Pico House (Casa de Pico) on the old plaza of Los Angeles, opposite today's Olvera Street. At the time of its opening in 1869, it was the most lavish hotel in Southern California. Even before 1900, however, it, and the surrounding neighborhood declined, as the business center moved further south. After decades as a shabby flophouse, the hotel was deeded to the State of California in 1953, it is now a part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Monument. It is used on occasion for exhibits and special events.

Politics[edit]

Pico twice served as Governor of Alta California, taking office the first time from Manuel Victoria in 1832, when Victoria was deposed for refusing to follow through with orders to secularize the mission properties; as governor pro tem and "Vocal" of the Departmental Assembly, Pico began secularization. After 20 days in office, he abdicated in favor of Zamorano and Echeandía, who governed the north and south, respectively, until José Figueroa reunified the governorship in 1833.

Pico ran for office in 1834 as the first alcalde (magistrate) of San Diego after secularization of the mission but was defeated, he challenged Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado (1836-1842) on political issues and was imprisoned on several occasions.

In 1844 he was chosen as a leader of the California Assembly. In 1845, he was again appointed governor, succeeding the unpopular Manuel Micheltorena. Pico made Los Angeles the province's capital. In the year leading up to the Mexican–American War, Governor Pico was outspoken in favor of California's becoming a British Protectorate rather than a U.S. territory.^{[citation needed]}

When U.S. troops occupied Los Angeles and San Diego in 1846 during the Mexican–American War, Pico fled to Baja California, Mexico, to argue before the Mexican Congress for sending troops to defend Alta California. Pico did not return to Los Angeles until after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and he reluctantly accepted the transfer of sovereignty.

Digital reproduction of the first official Bear Flag, credited to Pio Pico, affixed to the bottom of California's Declaration of Independence of 1846.

Automatically granted United States citizenship, he was elected to the Los Angeles Common Council in 1853, but he did not assume office.

Facial features and medical history[edit]

Pío Pico in 1858

In 2010, scientists published an article about Pio Pico asserting that he showed signs of acromegaly, a disease not characterized until later in the nineteenth century, they say that images of Pico from 1847 through 1858 show a characteristic pattern of progressive acromegaly, a disease caused by excessive and unregulated release of growth hormone from a growth hormone-secreting adenoma of the anterior pituitary gland.^[4] He demonstrates progressive coarsening of his facial features with a large bulbous nose, broad forehead, protuberant lips and forward-jutting jaw (prognathism), his hands reveal the diagnostic massive enlargement so typical of this illness. With a height of 67 inches in his forties, his acromegaly must have begun after puberty, or he would have manifested gigantism. Images of his younger brother Andrés Pico and elder brother, Jose Antonio Pico,^[5] show normal body features, suggesting Governor Pico's condition was a disease and not a benign familial trait. Pio Pico had never been recognized or diagnosed previously with acromegaly.

The apparent pituitary adenoma had at least three additional secondary effects on his medical condition besides causing acromegaly. First, his eyes show progressive misalignment, indicating the tumor grew laterally into the cavernous sinus and compromised the cranial nerves controlling eye muscle power. Second, he has a hairless face. Although potentially just a personal choice, in the presence of a large pituitary tumor, this is more likely due to testosterone deficiency; this condition results from the enlarging tumor interfering with the normal function of gonadotropin pituitary cells resulting in secondary hypogonadotropic hypogonadism and infertility. Third, in 1858 his lateral eyebrows were absent, indicating secondary hypothyroidism, also caused by the tumor compromising the function of the normal pituitary thyrotrope cells; the 1852 daguerreotype of Pio Pico^[4] may be the earliest objective image of acromegaly ever recorded since the disease was not recognized and named until Pierre Marie coined the term in 1886 while he was working at the clinic of Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, France.

The 1858 image of Pio Pico was used as an example of florid acromegaly in the scientific review paper "Acromegaly Pathogenesis and Treatment" published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.^[6]

Acromegaly is usually a fatal illness if untreated; 80% of patients die within 10 years of the diagnosis. But, Pico survived 36 years after the 1858 image, when his disease was active and had been present for at least 11 years; this unexpected situation was probably due to spontaneous pituitary apoplexy, in this case, selectively involving his tumor but not the remainder of his own pituitary gland.^[7] In selective pituitary tumor apoplexy, the adenoma undergoes infarction and shrinkage and disappears. No longer compressed by the adenoma, the nerves controlling the eye muscles could resume normal function and his remaining pituitary cells could restore normal levels of gonadotropic and thyrotropic hormones. Most importantly, absent the abnormally elevated levels of growth hormone that were released by the tumor, the features of acromegaly quickly regress.

Pio Pico, 1873, looks healthy, suggesting pituitary tumor apoplexy occurred between 1858 and 1873

Careful inspection of his appearance in his 90s (as shown in the full body image at the top of this entry) reveals a dramatic reversal of all the abnormal features that were so prominent earlier in his life,^[4] his hands are delicate and slender, his eyes are now precisely aligned, his eyebrows have returned and he has a full beard. Although the beard partly obscures his facial features, his lips, nose and forehead are no longer so large and coarse, he looks normal in these later years. Pico was fortunate, as the mortality from pituitary tumor apoplexy in this pre-treatment era was 50%, and over 80% of patients who survived had inadequate function of the remaining pituitary hormone cells, it is difficult to determine how soon after 1858 the apoplexy developed to cause his striking recovery, as until now there have been no known photographs found of Pico between age 57 and the images of him in his 90s. In 2009, the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, burial site of Pico and his wife, received a private 1873 photograph of Pio Pico donated by a descendant of the Temple family. Compared with the 1858 image (above and to the left) Pico at age 72 now shows a generous beard, full eyebrows, symmetrical light reflection on his eyes and less prominence of his acromegalic features, his appearance at age 72 is virtually identical to that in his 90s and supports the hypothesis that his selective pituitary tumor apoplexy actually took place between 1858 and 1873.^[8] This new image enhances the controversial probability that Pico was likely the biological father of Alfredo Romero born in 1871.^[4] Pico's selective pituitary tumor apoplexy may be the earliest recorded clinical example of this event as documented photographically because the first description of pituitary tumor apoplexy was published only in 1898.^[7]

Pico suffered the dual misfortune of disfigurement from acromegaly and ridicule. Gertrude Atherton, a prominent San Francisco writer, said of Pico in 1902: "... an uglier man than Pio Pico rarely had entered this world. The upper lip of his enormous mouth dipped at the middle; the broad thick under lip hung down with its own weight; the nose was big and coarse, although there was a certain spirited suggestion in the cavernous nostrils ..."^[9]

Later life[edit]

Following the American annexation of California, Pico dedicated himself to his businesses.

He survived the American conquest of California, becoming one of the wealthiest California cattlemen, controlling more than a quarter million acres, he defended his position and fortune in over 100 legal cases, including 20 that were argued before the California Supreme Court.

However, gambling, losses to loan sharks, bad business practices, being a victim of fraud, and the flood of 1883 ruined him financially. For example, in 1893, Pico made an arrangement with Bernard Cohn in which Cohn paid Pico more than $60,000 in exchange for a deed to Pico's property in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the county. Pico sued Cohn, but lost on appeal;^[10] the decision, Pico v. Cohn (1891) 91 Cal. 129, 133-134, is classically cited by California appellate courts in cases having to do with the setting aside of a judgment in case of fraud.^[11]

Pico was forced to liquidate his real estate holdings and his final years were spent in near poverty. In 1893, a committee of local boosters and history enthusiasts asked him to appear at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition as "the last of the California "dons".^[12] Pico refused, considering it an affront to his dignity, he died in 1894 at the home of his daughter, Joaquina Pico Moreno, in Los Angeles. He was buried in the old Calvary Cemetery on North Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, but his remains, as well as those of his wife, were relocated in 1921 to a modest tomb in El Campo Santo Cemetery, now in the Homestead Museum in the City of Industry.^[13]

Pico held three different nationalities during his lifetime, he was born a Spaniard in New Spain, became a Mexican citizen as a young man, and finally a United States citizen. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, with fine clothes, expensive furnishings, and heavy gambling.

In 1927, Pío Pico State Historic Park was created from the ruins of his Rancho de Bartolo (El Ranchito) in Whittier, and Casa Pico mansion. Pico Boulevard, a major east-west thoroughfare in Los Angeles, is named for him. An elementary and middle school in Los Angeles' Mid-City district is also named in his honor. Pico Rivera, a city located in southeastern Los Angeles County, is named for the last Mexican governor.

The actor Will Kuluva played Pico in the 1966 episode "The Firebrand" of the syndicated western television series, Death Valley Days. Robert Anderson (1920-1996) was cast as General Philip Kearny, with Gregg Barton as Commodore Robert F. Stockton. Gerald Mohr played Pico's brother, Andrés Pico; the episode is set in 1848 with the establishment of California Territory and the tensions between the outgoing Mexican government and the incoming American governor.^[14]

See also[edit]

• Pio Pico State Historic Park
• Andrés Pico

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Salomon, Carlos Manuel (2010). Pio Pico: The Last Governor of Mexican California. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-8061-4090-2.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pío Pico.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Pío Pico

• Biography from the San Diego Historical Society excerpted from Smythe's History of San Diego (1907)
• "What made Pio Pico so, well, ugly?" - Los Angeles Times
• Pío Pico at Find a Grave
• Pío Pico papers, 1845-1846 at The Bancroft Library
• Salomon, Carlos Manuel (May 20, 2015). "Early Afro-Mexican Settlers in California". California Historical Society., C-SPAN Video Library