Solano, Alfred

Biography

Alfred Solano (1857-193?) as a child was the ward of the surveyor George Hansen (1824-1897). While still in school, he began helping the latter, eventually as full partner and heir, in the making of surveys of various tracts in Los Angeles County and in other parts of Southern California. Hansen, a native of Fiume on the Dalmatian coast in the Austrian Empire, had come to California around Cape Horn in 1850 to seek gold. Unsuccessful as a prospector, he began work as a surveyor in Los Angeles in 1853. In 1857, he was elected superintendent of the Los Angeles Vineyard Society of San Francisco, for whom he laid out the colony of Anaheim. He was also a central figure in the Los Angeles Canal & Reservoir Company and served as Los Angeles County Surveyor (1864-1869) and Los Angeles City Surveyor (1882). Hansen did the initial surveys of ranchos San Francisquito, los Felis, Sausal Redondo, and Aguaje de Centinela, divided ranchos la Ballona, la Ciénega, Sausal Redondo, San Pedro, San Antonio, and la Puente, and subdivided T.2-3S. R.13-14W. S.B.M. After Hansen's death in 1897, his records were left to Solano, who became a partner of Sidney B. Reeve, also a surveyor, with an office in Los Angeles. Following the death of Reeve, the material in the office concerning surveys was gathered together by his widow and Solano to form this collection.