Frances Lawton Keys was part of a wave of Anglo pioneers who came to the arid Southern California desert in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, patching together a variety of ventures on public domain land.
Nathan Harrison was San Diego County’s first black homesteader and a local legend. He was born enslaved in Kentucky. As a young man, he traveled west with his enslaver during the early years of the Gold Rush. In the mid-1870s he moved to Rincon and filed a homestead claim. Harrison later made his home two-thirds of the way up the west side of Palomar Mountain and filed a second homestead claim. His spring and stories became one of the highlights of a trip up Palomar Mountain.
When the eastern Mojave Desert was opened to homesteading in 1910, Lanfair Valley became the focus of a visionary group of African American entrepreneurs and clergy in Los Angeles who were determined to establish agricultural and mining colonies in this desert settlement. These homesteads are the stories of friends and family who came to Lanfair Valley to escape oppression and bigotry, and to claim land that with work could become land of their own.
Locations:Homestead National Historical Park, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
Alice Ballard, a black woman successfully homesteaded near Los Angeles, California at the beginning of the 20th century. Her success in a time of rampant racism and difficult socioeconomic conditions makes her story one of great importance. Alice Ballard, an unmarried African American woman, secured a patent for 160 acres of land in 1901 in what is now Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
In the high desert of California, flesh-colored boulders rise up out of the stark landscape and embrace a small valley where Keys Ranch stands. Use this lesson plan to learn about Keys Ranch.
