Rancho Los Encinos
Rancho Los Encinos (also Rancho El Encino and Rancho Encino) 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. History. 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 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. 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. He took formal title to the Rancho under U.S. California law in 1851. 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