page_title: Rancho Los Encinos
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Rancho Los Encinos / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: De la Osa adobe at Los Encinos State Historic Park at the Rancho Los Encinos, Encino, Los Angeles, California This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 71000142
context_page_description: Rancho Los Encinos 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 warm springs are now within the Los Encinos State Historic Park.
context_section_description: 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 natural springs on the land were used by the Tongva people.  Portola camped here, and the springs were a necessary stop for travelers on El Camino Real, and the Ventura Road, which became Ventura Blvd.
  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 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 Pio Pico re-granted the property to three of the Tongva Native American workers, recorded as Ramon, Francisco, and Roque, who raised cattle and corn on their regained land.
  In 1849, Don Vicente de la Osa or de la Ossa, the original owner of the nearby Rancho Providencia, acquired the Tongva Indian's 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. He took formal title to the Rancho under U.S. California law in 1851.
caption: The adobe house completed in 1850, built by Vicente de la Osa at Rancho Los Encinos.
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