Rodeo Drive takes its name from an old Mexican land grant called Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas (“roundup of the waters”, for the confluence of two canyon streams). The 4,539 acre rancho was deeded c. 1838 to María Rita Valdez de Villa (c. 1791-1854), whose late father was reportedly given the land in the late 1700s by the King of Spain. (Her mother was the mixed-race daughter of one of the 44 pobladores who founded Los Angeles in 1781.) Rita Valdez raised livestock and built two adobes near present-day Sunset Boulevard and Alpine Drive, but the hardships of managing this vast property were too great and so in 1854 she sold the struggling rancho to Benjamin Davis Wilson and Henry Hancock. Then she died. The land went through several more owners (their names survive in Hamel Drive, Preuss Road, and Whitworth Drive) before finally becoming Beverly Hills in 1906, courtesy of Burton Green’s Rodeo Land & Water Co. Note the median on Rodeo north of Santa Monica Boulevard: in 1907, a branch of the Pacific Electric Railway was built here. Called the Coldwater Canyon Line, it ran up to Sunset but proved to be a cash drain, so it was dismantled in 1923. The median then served as a bridle path for residents and their horses until 1938. Now it’s a bunch of bushes.
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