Added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 24, 1971

Last week we visited Los Encinos State Historic Park, the site of Rancho Los Encinos: a 19th century stopping point on El Camino Real (and a favorite stagecoach stop), with a duck-filled pond shaped like a Spanish guitar. The Park is a microcosm for the entire early history of Los Angeles, inhabited by Native Americans, Californios, Americans and Europeans, in a timeline that maps on well with the socioeconomic development of the region.

For thousands of years, Los Encinos State Historic Park was a village inhabited by the indigenous Tongva people, who used the natural springs on the site. When the San Fernando Mission was established in 1797, the site was largely abandoned; but after the Mexican government secularized the missions in 1834, three native Tongva men from the Mission named Ramon, Francisco and Roque were granted the land that would later become Rancho Los Encinos. By 1849 Franciso and Roque were dead and Ramon had run off to join the gold rush. The remaining family members sold the property to rancher Vincente de La Osa, who built the adobe house that still stands there. Eugene and Phillipe Garnier bought the property in 1869, built that awesome guitar pool, and also the two-story farmhouse that’s still in use as an administrative office for the CA State Parks system. Eventually much of the rancho was subdivided. Just under 1200 acres of it was parceled off in 1916 to become modern day Encino. The state of California has owned the remaining Los Encinos site since 1949.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+Rancho Los Encinos @ NRHP website