The Antonia and Pliny Temple family lived in Los Angeles until 1849, while Pliny worked in Jonathan's store, and then left his employ for a brief sojourn in the northern gold fields. This was followed by F.P.Temple's return to Los Angeles, around which time William Workman granted them half of the Rancho La Merced in the Whittier Narrows near today's South El Monte, California. The Temples built a single-story adobe house, said to have measured 70 x , and which later had a second floor of wood and was accompanied, by the 1870s, by a two-story French Second Empire (architecture)-style brick dwelling. The Temple ranch had vineyards, orchards, a grist mill, and was stocked with cattle, horses and other animals. Temple also was among the first in Los Angeles County to raise thoroughbred horses, starting in the early 1860s. He also was the owner of much property outside the county, including: horse grazing land in Alameda County, California; thousands of acres in Madera County and Fresno County, California; lumber mills in San Antonio Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains above modern Claremont, California and at Rancho San Jacinto y San Gorgonio near today's Idyllwild, California; and cattle ranch lands, a slaughterhouse and a butcher shop in Springfield, California and Columbia, California in Tuolumne County's famed gold centers.