page_title: Rancho San Francisco
section_title: Los Angeles area gold find
hierarchical_section_title: Rancho San Francisco / Los Angeles area gold find
caption_attribution_description: English: Oak of the Golden Dream, Placerita Canyon State Park, California, USA. This is a photo of a place or building that is listed on the California Historical Landmark listing in the United States. Its reference number is 168.
context_page_description: Rancho San Francisco was a land grant in present-day northwestern Los Angeles County and eastern Ventura County, California. It was a grant of 48,612 acres by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to Antonio del Valle, a Mexican army officer, in recognition for his service to Alta California. It is not related to the city of San Francisco.
  The rancho was the location of the first popularly known finding of gold in the Southern California area in 1842, in Placerita Canyon. Much of the present day city of Santa Clarita lies within the boundary of what was Rancho San Francisco. The adobe headquarters of the rancho, and the site of the gold find, are designated California Historical Landmarks. The rancho included portions of the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, Topatopa, and Sierra Pelona Mountain ranges.
context_section_description: On March 9, 1842, Francisco Lopez, the uncle of Antonio's second wife, Jacoba Feliz, took a rest under an oak tree in Placerita Canyon and had a dream that he was floating on a pool of gold. When he awoke, he pulled a few wild onions from the ground finding flakes of gold in the roots. Contrary to some portraits of him as a farmer who stumbled upon his discovery by dumb luck, Lopez had studied mineralogy at the University of Mexico and had been actively searching for gold. Evidence suggests that gold had previously been found in the area about thirty years prior, but the Lopez gold find was the first popularly documented incident in the area. This sparked a gold rush on a much smaller scale than the 1849 California Gold Rush. About 2,000 people, mostly from the Mexican state of Sonora, came to Rancho San Francisco to mine the gold.
  Knowledge of the gold find seems to have remained largely within Mexican territory. John Sutter and his "right-hand man" John Bidwell, both of whom sided with Gov. Manuel Micheltorena during the governor's power struggle with former Gov. Alvarado, were imprisoned after the latter's side won the bloodless Battle of Providencia in 1845. After their release, Bidwell headed north through Placerita Canyon, saw the mining operations, and was determined to search for gold on his way to Sutter's Fort.
  During the Mexican–American War, Del Valle destroyed the mine to prevent the United States from gaining its control. The tree where Lopez took his nap is now known as the "Oak of the Golden Dream" and is registered as California Historic Landmark #168.
caption: Oak of the Golden Dream in 2008
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