Pío Pico

Pío de Jesus Pico
Governor of Alta California
In office 1832 – 1832
Preceded by	Manuel Victoria
Succeeded by	Agustín V. Zamorano and José María de Echeandía
Governor of Alta California
In office 1845 – 1846
Preceded by	Manuel Micheltorena
Succeeded by	José Mariá Flores
Born	May 5, 1801(1801-05-05) Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
Died	September 11, 1894 (aged 93) Los Angeles, California
Spouse(s)	María Ignacia Alvarado
Profession	Entrepreneur, Politician
Religion	Roman Catholic

Pío de Jesus Pico (May 5, 1801 – September 11, 1894) was the last Mexican Governor of Alta California.

Origins

Pío Pico was a Mexican governor of California. He was born at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel to José María Pico and María Eustaquia Gutiérrez with the aid of midwife Eulalia Pérez de Guillén Mariné. He was the fourth of ten children of mixed ancestry (he had African, Italian, Native American, and Spanish blood). His paternal grandmother, María Jacinta de la Bastida, was listed in the 1790 census as mulata. His grandfather, Santiago de la Cruz Pico, described as a Mestizo in the same census, was among the soldiers accompanying Juan Bautista de Anza on the expedition that launched from Tubac, Arizona for California around 1775 with the intent to explore and colonize.^[1] After the death of his father in 1819 he settled in San Diego, California. He married María Ignacia Alvarado on February 24, 1834.

Business life

Pico set up a tanning hut and dram shop in 1821 at Los Angeles, selling a drink for two bits (25 cents). His retailing businesses became a significant source of income.

Early California settler John Bidwell includes him in his recollection of people he knew in early Los Angeles: "Los Angeles I first saw in March, 1845. It then had probably two hundred and fifty 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".^[2]

By the 1850s Pico was one of the richest men of Mexican Alta California. In 1850 he purchased the 8,894-acre (3,600 hectare) Rancho Paso de Bartolo, which included half of present day Whittier. He built a home on this ranch in 1852 and lived there until 1892. Today, his home is preserved 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 totaling over one half-million acres, or 800 mi² (2,000 km²).

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

Political life

Pico served twice 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 mission properties. As governor pro tempore and Vocal of the Departmental Assembly, he set forth with secularization, handing the reins of government to Zamorano and Echeandia to respectively govern the north and south after only twenty days in office.

Pico ran in 1834 for office as the first alcalde (magistrate) of San Diego, but was unsuccessful. He actively challenged the government of Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado (1836 to 1842) and was imprisoned on several occasions. In 1844 he was chosen as a leader of the California Assembly, and began his second term as governor, succeeding the unpopular Manuel Micheltorena in 1845. Pico made Los Angeles the state capital. In the year leading up to the Mexican-American War, Governor Pico was outspoken in favor of California becoming a British Protectorate rather than American territory.

During the Mexican-American War, when U.S. troops occupied Los Angeles and San Diego in 1846, Pico fled to Baja California, Mexico, to argue a case for sending troops to defend California before the Mexican Congress as well as prevent himself being taken prisoner. After the war, Pico returned to Los Angeles in 1848, successfully surviving the Mexican-American transition after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1853 he was elected to the Los Angeles Common Council, but did not assume office.

Helping a friend

"The first notable land owner to pay tribute to (gringo) El Boticario [John G. Downey] was El Carpintero""^[3][4] Early settler Major Horace Bell gives this narrative of the series of events involved^[5]. "Lemuel Carpenter ... (with his) thoroughly Anglo-Saxon name, surely, but Lemuel was one of those Americans that had settled (and married well) in the Land of Mañana in early days, when it was still Mexico, and his business sense had become numbed by that easy faith in his fellow man which characterized the Californians when they negotiated one with another over financial matters."

"Lemuel Carpenter had become El Carpintero and almost as native as his Spanish nickname implied. He owned forty thousand acres of the richest land in California, thousands of head of horned cattle and a corresponding number of horses. He had a good ranch house, a vineyard, corn fields, barley fields, springs, streams and lakes; also a family. He was of the most honorable standing, respected by all who knew him. His age was about fifty. Authorities differ as to the date of Carpenter's arrival in Los Angeles. C. D. Willard in his "History of Los Angeles," says he came with a party of trappers in 1832 or '33. Harris Newmark in his "Sixty Years in Southern California," says he came with the Wilson-Workman-Rowland party from New Mexico in 1841."

"One unlucky day El Carpintero borrowed fifty dollars from El Boticario; this was about Christmas time, 1852, when he was having a good time among his friends in town and needed a little spending money instanter. For this sum he gave his note and forgot all about it for a year, when payment was demanded with interest. Lo, El Carpintero discovered he had signed a note bearing interest at the rate of 12 & 1/2 per cent. a day, compounded daily! The note had grown from fifty dollars to five thousand dollars or thereabouts. Then a new note was given Dec. 9, 1853, for five thousand dollars bearing interest at 5 per cent. a month, compounded monthly and payable in three months. This note was secured by the forty thousand acre ranch. Oh, he was a broth of a boy, this sprig of Irish royalty, commonly known as El Boticario! Did El Carpintero pay this five thousand dollars when due, with interest piled up? No, it ran on for a year and ten days. Then the interest was computed and another note given, this time for $9,154 at 5 percent a month, compounded monthly, secured by a second mortgage on the forty thousand acre ranch. This was in 1854."

"In 1856 the interest was again computed and another note was given for $4,000 with a reduced interest of 4 percent per month, compounded monthly. This note was given to secure an installment of interest due and unpaid, on the original note of fifty dollars with its accumulations. El Carpintero having finally exhausted his mortgage security the $4,000 note was secured by the signature of good old Don Pío Pico, last governor of California under Mexico, who was a neighbor and compadre of El Carpintero. And let it here be explained in passing that one compadre never goes back on another."

"It is an endearing relationship between men that does not exist in gringo society. It was in 1859 that El Boticario applied the thumbscrews of the law to El Carpintero and demanded his pound of flesh. He brought suit for the foreclosure of mortgage, and also sued on the Pico note. El Carpintero squared up; he paid it all, principal, interest, compound interest and costs, except the $4,000 note with its four years' compound interest and its costs. That was paid by poor old Don Píco. It was the first step of this Californian grandee on the downward grade to poverty. Of course El Carpintero paid the other notes not with cash but with his forty thousand acres, his cattle, horses, vineyards, cultivated fields; his springs, streams and lakes."

"More, he added his life's blood as further interest. He drove a bullet through his brain, and so passed the first of the great California private domains, and one of the richest, of that long list that was to go as tribute to the new business methods." The diary of Lemuel Carpenter's daughter Mary Refugio Carpenter includes this entry written on January 2, 1861: "I have been thinking so much of my father tonight. It made me weep."^[6].

Medical history

Images of Pio 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^[7] 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 just 67 inches in his forties, his acromegaly must have started after puberty because otherwise he would have manifest gigantism. Images of some siblings, younger brother Andres Pico and elder brother, Jose Antonio Pico II^[8] show normal body features suggesting Pico's condition was a true disease and not simply a benign familial trait. Pio Pico has 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 compromising the function of 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 function of the normal pituitary thyrotrope cells. The 1852 daguerreotype image of Pio Pico^[7] may be the earliest objective image of acromegaly ever recorded because the disease was not recognized and named until Pierre Marie coined the term in 1886 while working in the clinic of Charcot in Paris, France.

Acromegaly is usually a fatal illness if untreated; 80% of patients die within 10 years of the diagnosis. Yet, Pio Pico died 46 years after the 1858 image when his disease was floridly active and already present for at least 11 years. This highly unexpected situation is likely due to spontaneous pituitary apoplexy, in this case, selectively involving his tumor but not the remainder of his own pituitary gland.^[9] In selective pituitary tumor apoplexy the adenoma undergoes infarction and shrinkage and disappears. No longer compressed by the adenoma, the nerves to his eyes can resume normal function and his remaining pituitary cells can 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. Careful inspection of his appearance in his 90’s reveals a dramatic reversal of all the abnormal features that were so prominent earlier in his life.^[7] 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 large and coarse. He looks perfectly normal in these later years. Pico was remarkably fortunate however, because the mortality from pituitary tumor apoplexy in his 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 because there are no photographs to be found of Pico between 1858 at age 57 and the images of him in his 90's. 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.^[9]

Pico suffered the dual misfortune of both disfigurement from acromegaly plus ridicule over his unavoidable appearance. Among others who maligned his appearance, Gertrude Atherton, a prominent San Francisco writer, was the most flagrant and described Pico in 1902 in this manner: “…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…”^[10]

Epilogue

After the Mexican-American War, Pico dedicated himself to his businesses. However gambling, losses to loan sharks, bad business practices, being defrauded, and the 1883 flood ruined him financially. He was forced to liquidate his real estate holdings and his final years were spent in poverty. In 1893 a committee of local boosters and history enthusiasts^[11] asked him to appear at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition as "the last of the California dons", but refused it as 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 a modest tomb in El Campo Santo Cemetery at the Homestead Museum in the present City of Industry.

Pico had three nationalities during his life: he was born a Creole in New Spain, was later a Mexican citizen, then a United States citizen. He was known for his extravagant lifestyle, with fine clothes, expensive furnishings, and heavy gambling.

Besides his major political and business contributions, his legacy now must include the landmark presentations of acromegaly and spontaneous selective pituitary tumor apoplexy with full recovery. There are no current references to any of a variety of symptoms he might have manifest from the tumor itself or the secondary symptoms it might have produced. A partial list of these symptoms could include headache, double vision, loss of vision, fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, frequent urination and extreme thirst, severe snoring, muscle weakness and impotence. Such information, when and if available, will potentially confirm and extend the current state of knowledge of his medical history.

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 after the former governor. An elementary and junior high school in Los Angeles' Koreatown district is also named in his honor. Also, Pico Rivera, a city located in southeastern Los Angeles County, is named for him.

Quote(s)

See also

• Pio Pico State Historic Park
• Andres Pico

References

External links

• Biography from the San Diego Historical Society excerpted from Smythe's History of San Diego (1907)
• What made Pio Pico so, well, ugly? - LATimes

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