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Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela was a 2,219-acre (8.98 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Los Angeles County, California given in 1837 to Ygnacio Machado. The name means "Sentinel of Waters" in Spanish, and refers to the artesian water in the area exemplified by Centinela Springs. Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela included parts of present-day Westchester and Inglewood.
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History
Rancho Ajuaje de la Centinela, was once part of the Rancho Sausal Redondo, and Ygnacio Machado had encroached on the land claimed by Antonio Avila, and was awarded provisional title to this land at the same time that Antonio Avila received his land grant for the balance of the Rancho Sausal Redondo in 1837. In 1845, Machado traded the rancho to Bruno Avila, brother of Antonio Avila, for a small tract in the Pueblo of Los Angeles.
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 Aguaje de la Centinela was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was patented to Bruno Avila in 1872.
Bruno Avila, unable to repay his debts, lost his property through foreclosure in 1857. Subsequent to this, the Rancho Ajuaje de la Centinela changed hands a number of times. Robert Burnett acquired the Rancho Ajuaje de la Centinela from Joseph Lancaster Brent in 1860. In 1868, Burnett added the Rancho Sausal Redondo, joining the two ranchos again. Burnett returned to Scotland, and leased the 25,000 acres (101 km2) of the combined ranchos to Catherine Freeman (wife of Daniel Freeman) in 1873; with an agreement that she could eventually buy the ranchos outright. After Catherine's death in 1874, Daniel Freeman began the commercial development of the real estate. He became one of the directors of the Centinela Land Company, which started in 1874, with the purpose of developing commercially the Rancho Centinela. The venture failed, but Freeman was central in another undertaking, that of the Centinela-Inglewood Land Company in 1887 to develop what would be known as the town of Inglewood.