Origins 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. and the grant was
patented to Vicente de la Osa et al Jan. 8, 1873, for 4,460.73 acres.
Boom and bust , The
California Gold Rush of 1849 created a near-insatiable demand for beef, which was raised on the ranchos of southern California, including Rancho Los Encinos, and driven on the hoof to northern markets serving the gold fields. But the boom market in Southern California began to decline as early as 1855 as it became profitable to drive cattle and sheep to California from the
midwest and
Texas, and the
drought of 1856 increased the pressure on the ranchos. The De La Osa rancho was a popular stopping point for
El Camino Real and Camino Nuevo travelers, who could expect hospitality at the ranch house. The
Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach route between
St. Louis, Missouri and
San Francisco via
Fort Yuma and
Los Angeles passed through the rancho, making its first run in the fall of 1858. A new stagecoach route opened in 1861, diverging from the old El Camino Real at Rancho Los Encinos and heading for
Santa Barbara via the
Santa Susana Stage Road over
Santa Susana Pass in the
Simi Hills. The rancho was a
stagecoach stop on it until the new railroad replaced Butterfield stages in 1875. With the cattle market in collapse and besieged by mounting debts, in 1859 De la Osa converted his house into a roadside inn and began to charge patrons for his legendary
Californio hospitality. Don Vicente De la Osa died in 1861, and his widow Rita sold the property to James Thompson in 1867, and a brick-lined
pond collecting the spring's outflow and shaped like a
Spanish guitar. The Garnier brothers also raised sheep on the property, and were known for the fine quality of their
fleece, but they in turn became overextended and lost the property to foreclosure in 1878. The property changed hands three times in the next twenty years, having been acquired by Simon Gless a Basque who was married to a French woman and four other native women; eventually, he sold the property to his Basque father-in-law,
Domingo Amestoy, in 1889. The fields were used for
wheat farming, as was most of the Valley after
Isaac Newton Van Nuys introduced
dryland farming there. The Amestoy family lived on the property until 1945, selling off of land in 1916 that would become the community of Encino, and further subdividing the ranchlands thereafter. In a story typical of the San Fernando Valley's rapid urbanization, the adobe was used as the sales office for the post-war subdivisions surrounding it—and was to be torn down and used as commercial property. Concerned neighbors led a fight to have the adobe, and the spring, to be purchased by the State of California. The last remaining parcel, including the historic buildings and the
spring, was acquired by the state of California in 1949. ==Los Encinos State Historic Park==