Rancho El Encino

About this property

Rancho Los Encinos (also Rancho El Encino and Rancho Encino) was a Spanish grazing concession, and later Mexican land granted cattle and sheep rancho and travelers way-station on the El Camino Real in the San Fernando Valley, in present-day Encino, Los Angeles County, California. The original 19th-century adobe and limestone structures and natural Encino Springs are now within the Los Encinos State Historic Park. The name of the rancho derives from the original designation of the Valley by the Portola expedition of 1769: El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de los Encinos, with encino being the Spanish name for Oaks, after the many native deciduous Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) and evergreen Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) trees across the valley's savannah, which are still found on the park's property. The naturally carbonated Encino Springs on the land were used by Tongva people of Suitcanga village. Portola camped here, and the springs were a necessary stop for travelers on El Camino Real, and the Ventura Road, which became Ventura Boulevard. Francisco Reyes, alcalde, or mayor of Pueblo de Los Angeles from 1793–1795, established the original Rancho Encino in the northern San Fernando Valley. In or around 1797 Reyes ceded this land to the Roman Catholic Church to be the site of Mission San Fernando Rey de España, and relocated his Rancho Encino to one square Spanish league (4,460 acres) of land in the southern valley adjacent to El Camino Real and between the Los Angeles River and Santa Monica Mountains. Reyes was accused of mistreating the Mission Indians who worked his rancho, and in 1845 Mexican Governor Pío Pico re-granted the property to three of the Tongva Native American workers, recorded as Ramon, Francisco, and Roque, who raised cattle and corn. Ramon, Francisco and Roque had worked the land beginning in about 1834, however, by the time the claim was recognized in 1845 "Francisco and Roque were dead. Their widows inherited the land and worked it for a few years with Ramon and his family until 1849 when Roman deserted them and his daughter Aguedo, and ran off to the gold fields." The surviving widows of the grantees sold out. In 1849, Don Vicente de la Osa or de la Ossa, the original owner of the nearby Rancho Providencia, acquired the Tongva Indians' interests in the property. His wife was Rita de Guillén de la Ossa, daughter of Eulalia Pérez de Guillén Mariné of Rancho San Pascual. He built a 9-room adobe farmhouse in 1849–1850 that still stands near the spring. According to the Los Angeles Times, "A petition for Rancho el Encino was presented to the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners in 1852, in which Don Vincent de la Ossa claimed he had purchased one-third of the property in 1849. Unable to pay his taxes, Ramon sold the final portion in 1857 to de la Osa, who paid $9.33 for 312 acres." After de la Osa died, his widow sold it to L.A. County sheriff James Paul Thompson, who was also her future son-in-law.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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