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 ...

On this day in 1853, Ygnacio del Valle inherited the 48,829-acre Rancho San Francisco, a vast tract of land that would eventually give rise to much of the Santa Clarita Valley. The rancho had first been granted in 1839 to Ygnacio’s father, Antonio del Valle, a former Mexican army lieutenant and administrator of Mission San Fernando.  After Antonio’s death in ...

On this day in 1841, Antonio del Valle, a Mexican soldier and grantee of over 48,000 acres of land that would eventually form the Santa Clarita Valley, died. Born in 1788 in Compostela, Jalisco, Mexico,  del Valle served as a lieutenant for the Mexican army, fighting for his home country against Spain during the Mexican Revolution of the 1820s and ...