16 Facts About Pio Pico

Don Pio de Jesus Pico was a Californio politician, ranchero, and entrepreneur, famous for serving as the last governor of California under Mexican rule.

Santiago de la Cruz Pio 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.

Pio 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.

Pio Pico ran for office in 1834 as the first alcalde of San Diego after secularization of the mission but was defeated.

Pio Pico challenged Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado on political issues and was imprisoned on several occasions.

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Pio Pico had no money to feed his army, which then spread out to people's homes and farms “like a plague of locusts, stripping the countryside bare.

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.

Pio 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.

Pio Pico survived the American conquest of California, becoming one of the wealthiest California cattlemen, controlling more than a quarter million acres.

Pio Pico defended his position and fortune in over 100 legal cases, including 20 that were argued before the California Supreme Court.

Pio Pico was forced to liquidate his real estate holdings and his final years were spent in near poverty.

Pio Pico died in 1894 at the home of his daughter, Joaquina Pico Moreno, in Los Angeles.

Pio Pico 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.

Pio Pico was born a Spaniard in New Spain, became a Mexican citizen as a young man, and finally a United States citizen.

Pio Pico was known for his extravagant lifestyle, with fine clothes, expensive furnishings, and heavy gambling.

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.