The Rindge couple had three children: Samuel, Frederick Jr., and
Rhoda Agatha. The family first settled into a home in
Santa Monica. which eventually burned down in a brush fire in 1903. They also had a home in Santa Monica. It had been Rindge Sr.'s dream when he first came to California with his father on the first transcontinental railroad. He had always wanted a farm by the sea, and once he purchased the Malibu rancho as the final Spanish land grant owner of the property, he established a cattle ranch. He also became deeply involved in civic life, from serving as director of Edison Electric, founding Conservative Life Insurance Company, and promoting
Temperance by helping close saloons in Santa Monica to building Santa Monica's First Methodist Episcopal Church and taking the post of vice president of Union Oil. When he died suddenly at the age of 48 Rhoda May Knight Rindge was left with the totality of his business dealings, setting the stage for her unusual position at the time as a woman at the helm of a major family estate.
Victory over Southern Pacific Railroad and construction of Malibu Pier Prior to her husband's death, there had been word that
Southern Pacific intended to connect their
Santa Barbara terminus with
Santa Monica, which would entail running tracks right through the vast 13,315-acre Rindge property. Frederick hatched a plan to take advantage of an obscure
Interstate Commerce Commission law that stated if one railway ran through a property, there could be no other railway doing the same. Hence Rindge decided to build his own private track—a utilitarian one to service his cattle ranch—but died before carrying out the plan, leaving the operation up to Rhoda May. She subsequently built the
Malibu Pier and 15 miles of standard gauge track, known as the
Hueneme, Malibu and Port Los Angeles Railway, that ran down the length of the pier, where a steam-powered crane lifted cattle hides and walnuts onto boats for shipment and grains onto land for cattle-feed. to take up the new fight against the Federal Government and People of the State of California. However, she uncovered clay with thousands upon thousands of homes being built, and furthermore, in the tile-reliant
Mission Revival, Mayan Revival,
Spanish Colonial Revival, and
Moorish Revival styles, and patterns and iconography were inspired by books from an expensive library with which Rindge furnished the pottery. The potteries produced not only flat ceramic tiles for ceilings, walls, baseboards, and floors but also ceramic tile fountains, murals, urns, and bathroom built-ins like toothbrush holders and soap dishes.
Construction of Serra Retreat and Malibu Movie Colony Despite the success of the pottery, Rindge still struggled to balance her finances, and began work on a three-wing, 55-room mansion, called the Rindge Castle, atop Laudamus Hill, By 1942, she was forced to sell her unfinished castle, with the buyer being the
Franciscan order. Though most of the castle eventually burned to the ground in the 1970s, various parts were salvaged, including
Malibu tile, and the property is still in the hands of the Franciscans as Serra Retreat. ==Bankruptcy, death, and legacy==