On this day in 1873, Santa Barbara attorneys Charles H. Fernald and Jarrett “J.T.” Richards purchased Rancho San Francisco at a sheriff’s auction for $33,000 — about 75 cents an acre.

The sale, recorded October 20, 1873, marked another turning point in the turbulent ownership of the 48,829-acre rancho that once stretched across much of today’s Santa Clarita Valley.

Rancho San Francisco had been inherited twenty years earlier, in 1853, by Ygnacio del Valle following the death of his father, Antonio del Valle, who originally received the Mexican land grant in 1839.

Financial hardship and a devastating drought in the 1860s forced the Del Valle family to sell much of their land, leading to the 1873 sheriff’s sale.

Fernald and Richards, both respected figures in Santa Barbara’s legal community, briefly held the rancho but defaulted on payments, losing the property soon after.

Another sheriff’s auction was scheduled but later canceled when a private buyer, San Francisco businessman Henry Mayo Newhall, stepped in.

Newhall’s acquisition was recorded on February 20, 1875, laying the foundation for what would become the Newhall Land and Farming Company and the modern Santa Clarita Valley.

Charles Heard Fernald, born in Maine in 1830, came to California during the Gold Rush, became a self-taught lawyer at age 22, and went on to serve as sheriff, district attorney, and judge of Santa Barbara County.

A noted authority on Mexican land grants, Fernald died in Santa Barbara on July 7, 1892, at age 65.

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.

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