On November 22, 1843, Governor Manuel Micheltorena of Alta California granted 22,178 acres in the Lebec–Fort Tejon area to José María Covarrubias, a French-born schoolteacher who had become a naturalized Mexican citizen.

The property, known as Rancho Castac (also spelled Castec, Castac, or Castaic), included the original Castac Lake — not to be confused with the man-made Castaic Reservoir, which opened in 1972 — and stretched roughly from modern-day Lebec north to the base of the Grapevine.

“Plan del paraje conocido bajo el nombre de Castec” (“Plan area known under the name of Castec”) by Esteban Ardisson. Undated; believed to be approx. 1842. Original in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. There is a date of 1857 at upper right; that date relates not to the map’s origin but rather to its entry into evidence in federal court while the landowner was in the process of proving his claim to the property. (SCV History)

Covarrubias, who had emigrated from France in 1834, was deeply involved in Mexican-controlled California’s early government.

He served in Monterey and Santa Barbara, including a term as mayor, and was a member of the California Constitutional Convention of 1849. He later represented the region in the state Assembly from 1849 to 1862 and even purchased Santa Catalina Island in 1850.

The rancho’s southern section became home to Fort Tejon in 1854, when the U.S. Army established a garrison to oversee the nearby 75,000-acre Sebastian (Tejon) Indian Reservation and guard against raids from neighboring tribes.

Fort Tejon operated for only a decade, closing in 1864 as the Army redirected funds to the Civil War effort.

After the U.S. annexation of California, Covarrubias had to prove ownership under the Land Act of 1851. In 1853, he filed a claim for Rancho Castac, which the U.S. Public Land Commission upheld in 1866. However, by that time, Edward F. “Ned” Beale, then U.S. Surveyor-General for California and Nevada, had already acquired the property through an intermediary, a move that ultimately led to his dismissal by President Abraham Lincoln, who did not want a surveyor to become the “monarch of all he has surveyed.”

Beale’s acquisition of Rancho Castac marked the beginning of a vast portfolio that eventually included Rancho El Tejon, Rancho Los Alamos, Rancho La Liebre, and tens of thousands of acres of railroad and settler lands.

Although Beale hoped to develop the land for farms and settlements, he still owned it at his death in 1893.

His heirs sold the property to the principals of the Los Angeles Times, who incorporated it as Tejon Ranch Company, which exists to this day.

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