The Last of the Dons
Greek George Caralambo was future West Hollywood’s first resident, but his place in local history, tending camels in the 1860s near present-day Melrose Place, has largely been erased over the years. Instead, it was Eugene—also known as Eugenio—Plummer who became West Hollywood’s de facto founding father.
In his later years, he opened the land around his family home on the Santa Monica Road for unofficial use as a public park. About six acres of his original 1,000-acre holding is now West Hollywood’s Plummer Park on Santa Monica Boulevard. Beginning in the early 1920s, he hosted annual fiestas, where Angelenos of all ages gathered to celebrate the area’s Californio past. Guests, dressed in the style of the rancheros, played music, danced fandangos, and barbecued pigs and steers.
Eugenio was known around Hollywood as a storyteller whose tales of life in what was then called the Cahuenga Valley—today’s Greater Hollywood—kept the city’s early history alive. In 1928, when he was 76 years old, the Los Angeles Times described him as “a repository of local history. He is recognized as one of the few living today whose reminiscences are of authentic value as well as picturesque interest.”
Plummer was also a significant landowner, accumulating property that today encompasses much of Hollywood, the Fairfax District, West Hollywood, and even the Hollywood Bowl. At the core of his properties was Plummer Rancho, which comprised 160 acres between today’s Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards and La Brea and Gardner Avenues, including Plummer Park.
Known as “the last of the dons,” he lived to be 91, outlasting by decades other notable 19th-century West Hollywood figures like Greek George Caralambo, Henry Hancock, and Tiburcio Vasquez.
Eugenio Plummer was born on January 8, 1852, in San Francisco. He celebrated his Latino roots, and while he did have Spanish (some say Portuguese) ancestry, his parents were both Canadians. His father, John Cornelius Plummer, was an Anglo sea captain. His mother, Maria Cecilia McGuire Pacheco, was a formidable and independent woman of Latina and Irish descent. Eugenio also had a brother named John, known as Juan.
With Captain Plummer absent for long periods, Maria and the boys were left to fend for themselves. Fortunately, Maria was more than equal to the task. In Guaymas, Mexico, she raised and sold fruit, chickens, and hogs. After moving to Fort Yuma, California, on the Mexican border, she owned and operated a 50-room hotel. Legend has it that she once rescued Eugenio from the Apache Tontos, who had made him a chief.
In 1868, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Maria Plummer opened a restaurant and bought a farm in the Cahuenga Valley. She supplied her restaurant with milk, eggs, and meat from the farm and used scraps from the restaurant to feed her hogs. Maria also invested her profits in land in the Cahuenga Valley.
In his oral history memoir, Señor Plummer, Eugenio recalled his mother often fending off attempts to steal her land. “It seems to me as I look back,” he said, “that poor mother was in court every month or two, against one crook or another. Just because she was a woman with a husband far at sea, they thought she made easy prey and kept trying to get the best of her by every trick they knew. But she knew a few tricks herself, even if her husband was in China, and managed to hang on to what she’d worked hard for, longer than many other old-timers we knew.”
By 1874, Maria Plummer had acquired 160 acres in the Cahuenga Valley. She and her sons moved into a small house on the Santa Monica Road at the ranch’s southern border. The current-day boundaries of Plummer Rancho were Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevards to the north and south, respectively, and La Brea and Gardner Avenues to the east and west. The family home stood where Plummer Park is today.
Eugenio Meets the Bandit Tiburcio Vasquez
When Eugenio was 21 years old, he encountered the infamous bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, who was hiding out not far from Plummer Rancho at Greek George Caralambo’s cabin.
He met Vasquez at a party at a granary in nearby Nichols Canyon in late March 1874, about six weeks before Vasquez was captured at Greek George’s ranch. By custom, it was a public gathering, and everyone was welcome. Vasquez, posing as Ricardo Cantua, decided to drop by. Eugenio remembered that a short, dark man approached him between dances and said, “I understand you can read a newspaper?”
“Sí, señor,” Plummer replied. He had grown up with many Latino friends and neighbors, was fluent in Spanish, and was employed as a courtroom translator.
“What do the periódicos say about Tiburcio Vasquez?”
“Oh, a great deal that is true, I suppose, and just as much that isn’t.”
“Sí, sí, es verdad.” [Yes, yes, that’s true.]
After some casual talk, the stranger told Plummer, “This is all confidential.”
“In that case, señor,” Plummer replied, “Perhaps you will give me your confidence. What is your name?”
“Señor Tiburcio Vasquez, at your service.”
“You have a good reputation,” Vasquez said. “You’ve helped a lot of Mexicanos. Will you do me a favor, amigo?” The bandit produced a roll of bills and peeled off $50, asking Plummer to buy shoes and food, deliver the shoes to Greek George’s house, and take the food to a location in Big Tujunga Canyon where his gang was hiding. Eugenio did as he was asked. A few days later, when the deal was done, Eugenio mentioned to Vasquez that a couple of his horses were missing. Vasquez promised that the horses would be returned. Within a week, they were peacefully grazing in his pasture.
In his memoir Señor Plummer, Eugenio rationalized helping the accused killer: “I knew about this fellow’s crimes and felt like turning him over to the authorities,” he said, “but it would have spoiled the faith that a lot of the Spanish-speaking people had in me—people that needed my help now and then, in the courts and out. I realized, too, that some of these bandits and their followers weren’t much worse in their way than some of the land sharks and lawyers were in theirs.”