Flores was the commander and chief of the Mexican forces in California during the Mexican-American War.
With the cession of California to the United States following the Mexican-American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho La Liebre was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852.[3][4] Flores nearly lost his entitlement to the rancho when the Public Land Commission declared the grant to be fraudulently obtained. The Land Commission contended that Pico back dated many of the land grants he issued and that Rancho La Liebre was granted while California was under American control and no longer a part of Mexico. However, Flores won an appeal and kept the title. The grant was patented to Jose Maria Flores in 1875.[5]
La Casa del Rancho La Liebre is the adobe built by Edward F. Beale in the late 1850s in Bear Canyon (Canon de las Osas). By the time Beale acquired La Liebre, he had married Mary Edwards and had a son named Truxtun. The house was the administrative headquarters for the nearly 270,000 acres (1,093 km2)of ranch land that expanded over both Los Angeles and Kern Counties. It is a half mile south of State Route 138, approximately ten miles east of Interstate 5.[6][7]
^Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco
