Encino
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About this ebook
Michael Crosby
Michael Crosby is Assistant Professor of GIS and Remote Sensing at Louisiana Tech University. He has 15 years experience in GIS and remote sensing applications related to the impacts of severe weather and climate change on forests, spatial modelling, and geographic education. He currently teaches courses in GIS, GPS, remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, and spatial intelligence at Louisiana Tech. He received an A.A. from Jones County Junior College, a Bachelor’s degree in Geosciences (Meteorology) from Mississippi State University, a Masters degree in Geography from the University of Southern Mississippi, and a PhD in Forest Resources from Mississippi State University.
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Encino - Michael Crosby
generations.
INTRODUCTION
On the afternoon of August 5, 1769, Spanish captain Gaspar de Portola led an expedition of 64 men and 100 mules up the California coast to find the fabled Monterey Bay. Blocked by steep cliffs at the shore of Santa Monica Bay, they traveled up a Native American trail through a canyon known today as the Sepulveda Pass in the Santa Monica Mountains and happened upon a vast valley of tall grass and scattered groves of oaks, or encinos, and a gentle river lined with reeds. They named the place El Valle de Santa Catalina de Bononia de los Encinos. At an artesian spring in the area of today’s Encino, they met a society of native people. Fr. Juan Crespi, the expedition’s diarist, mentions the spring and tribal area in his writings of the expedition. He wrote, Two large villages of very fine, well-behaved and very friendly heathens who must have amounted to about 200 souls, men, women and children. They offered us their seeds in baskets.
In a 1980s archaeological dig of the area that was dubbed The Lost Village of Encino,
old Spanish beads were unearthed.
The modern city of Encino began around this artesian spring that served as a gathering place of many tribes, including the Tataviam, Chumash, and Tongva, for several thousand years. This ancient spring still provides water today within the grounds of Los Encinos State Historic Park, a tiny jewel hidden along the busy Ventura Boulevard. In the early 1800s, with the development of the mission system, native tribes were merged together into the Mission San Fernando del Rey and called the Fernandenos by the Spanish. With the breakdown of the mission system in 1834, native peoples homesteaded the land surrounding the spring.
On July 8, 1845, Gov. Pio Pico officially recognized the claim of three Mission Indians named Roman, Francisco, and Roque. They were given a 4,460-acre rancho (1 Mexican league) in what was to become Rancho El Encino. The families grazed cattle and horses while growing simple crops with the help of the spring and the gentle river.
The heirs to the land grant lost ownership in the late 1840s because of a variety of financial disputes. Over the next several decades, there was an interesting, and at times controversial, international sequence of ownership of the rancho from Californio, French, Basque, and American owners. The de la Ossa family, the Thompsons, the Garniers, the Oxararts, the Glesses, and the Amestoys all owned the rancho land, each owner making his mark on its development in some way. Most significantly, Vicente de la Ossa, the first owner after Native American occupancy, built the adobe in 1849 to house his large family and service the travelers along El Camino Real. French brothers Eugene and Phillipe Garnier built the two-story limestone building in 1872. Over the following years, both structures have withstood neglect, urbanization, and the threat of demolition, not to mention serious earthquake damage. Yet the buildings still stand to this day.
In 1915, when property values skyrocketed and other communities in the San Fernando Valley began spreading out, the Amestoy family began selling off portions of their rancho for the future community of Encino. However, the area remained largely rural and sparsely populated through the late 1930s. Maps and aerial photographs of the San Fernando Valley from the time show the area of Encino as still fairly undeveloped. The Army Corps of Engineers bought several hundred acres at the northern end of the old rancho following the devastating flood of 1938. They built the iconic Sepulveda Dam in the flood basin and created a cement channel for the erratic Los Angeles River.
In the post–World War II boom, the community began to grow along Ventura Highway, and movie stars like Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney, and Al Jolson built large homes in the Encino hills south of what is now Ventura Boulevard. The rich and famous still live in the lush hillside above the old rancho.
In 1945, the last remaining four acres of Rancho El Encino were going on the market, and the old adobe and two-story limestone building were slated for demolition. Encino resident Marie Stewart and the Encino Women’s Club roused support and saved the historical monument from the fate of so many other Los Angeles landmarks. In 1949, the 100-year-old adobe, with the remaining land and structures, became officially incorporated as part of the California State Park System. Los Encinos State Historic Park sits on the corner of Ventura Boulevard and La Maida Avenue, an oasis of beauty and history in the midst of a busy and ever-growing city.
One
THE LAND OF THE CALIFORNIOS
This tribal map shows Shoshone and Chumash ranchorias, or villages, that populated the semiarid San Fernando Valley before the Spanish arrived in 1769. The native people utilized the freshwater springs and streams along with other abundant resources of the fertile