Named by Rufus Paine Spalding (1875-1946) on his Miramonte tract. Spalding was born in Hawaii, as was his mother Wilhelmina, whose maiden name was Makee. Her father James was a whaler who came to the islands in 1843, became a merchant, and cofounded the Makee Sugar Company in 1877, two years before his death. With over 7,000 acres of sugar cane in Maui and multiple mills in Kauai, it was once the islands’ biggest sugar producer. Wilhelmina Makee married Zephaniah Swift Spalding in 1871; he was the son of an Ohio congressman (the original Rufus Paine Spalding) and had been sent to Hawaii as U.S. Consul and “confidential agent”. He took over Makee Sugar after James Makee’s death. As for our Rufus Spalding, he came to L.A. in early 1905 and almost immediately bought and subdivided this tract. He married his second wife Elsa in 1909 and had one child with her: Rufus Jr. After divorcing Elsa in 1926 – she ran off to Paris with a French journalist – he lived with his brother James in South Pasadena.
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