Rancho San Francisco: Forty-Eight Thousand Acres

In January of eighteen thirty-nine, Mexican Governor Juan Bautista Alvarado granted forty-eight thousand six hundred and twelve acres in what is now northwestern Los Angeles County to Antonio del Valle, a former army officer who had served as administrator of Mission San Fernando. The adobe headquarters of what became Rancho San Francisco was built around eighteen oh four as a mission granary, making it one of the oldest structures in the region. Del Valle ran cattle and sheep across the enormous grant, but the severe droughts of the eighteen sixties devastated the livestock and the family's finances.

Del Valle sold most of the land in eighteen sixty-two, keeping only Rancho Camulos. Today part of the Santa Clarita area, including Castaic, lies within what was once the rancho.