Rancho Los Feliz was a Spanish land concession in present-day Los Angeles County, California given in 1795 by Spanish Governor Pedro Fages to

José Vicente Feliz Jose Vicente Feliz (ca. 1741 – 1822) was a member of the 1775–76 Anza expedition that brought the first settlers to California. In 1781, he was one of four soldiers which guarded the settlers which founded the settlement of El Pueblo de Nues ...

. The land of the grant includes

Los Feliz LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significanc ...

and

Griffith Park Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park includes popular attractions such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry Museum of the Ameri ...

, and was bounded on the east by the

Los Angeles River , name_etymology = , image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg , image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge , image_size = 300 , map = LARmap.jpg , map_size ...

History

Given to Jose Vicente Feliz, this was one of the first land grants made in California. Born in Sonora, Mexico, about 1741, Corporal Feliz, a veteran of the

Anza Expedition Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto (July 6 or 7, 1736 – December 19, 1788) was an expeditionary leader, military officer, and politician primarily in California and New Mexico under the Spanish Empire. He is credited as one of the founding fa ...

of 1776, was the Spanish military leader at the

Pueblo of Los Angeles In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spai ...

. In 1787 Governor Fages appointed Feliz as Comisionado of the Los Angeles Pueblo, giving him the powers of Mayor and Judge. For his service, Feliz was granted Rancho Los Feliz. The grant was confirmed in 1843 by Mexican Governor Manuel Micheltorena to Maria Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz. Maria Ygnacia Feliz was the wife of one of the sons of Anastacio María Féliz. Anastacio was probably a cousin of José Vicente Féliz. When Maria's husband died, she petitioned for a grant in her name and in the name of her son José Antonio Féliz. Governor Micehltorena granted it to her in 1843. She did not remarry. With the

cession The act of cession is the assignment of property to another entity. In international law it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty. Ballentine's Law Dictionary defines cession as "a surrender; a giving up; a relinquishment of jurisdictio ...

of California to the United States following the Mexican–American War, the 1848

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ( es, Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo), officially the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the United Mexican States, is the peace treaty that was signed on 2 ...

provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, a claim for Rancho Los Feliz was filed with the Public Land Commission in 1852, and the grant was

patented A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

to Maria Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz in 1871. In 1863, lawyer

Antonio F. Coronel Don Antonio Francisco Coronel (October 21, 1817 – April 17, 1894) was a Californio politician and ranchero who was Mayor of Los Angeles and California State Treasurer. Coronel was considered one of the first preservationists in Los Angeles, and ...

acquired ownership of Rancho Los Feliz from the heirs of Maria Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz. Coronel sold Rancho Los Feliz to

James Lick James Lick (August 25, 1796 – October 1, 1876) was an American real estate investor, carpenter, piano builder, land baron, and patron of the sciences. The wealthiest man in California at the time of his death, Lick left the majority of his es ...

, a wealthy businessman from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. Lick died in 1876. In 1882, Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith acquired of Rancho Los Feliz. Colonel Griffith donated to the city of Los Angeles (nearly half of the original rancho), which became Griffith Park, one of the largest city-owned parks in the country. At the time, the Lick estate still owned the southwest portion of the rancho, and there developed the Lick Tract, which later became a part of Hollywood.

Historic sites of the Rancho

* Los Feliz Adobe. An old adobe house built in the 1830s by heirs of Feliz still stands in Griffith Park (Park Ranger's Headquarters). Rancho Los Feliz
/ref> * Maugna, site of former Native American

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

ranchería The Spanish word ranchería, or rancherío, refers to a small, rural settlement. In the Americas the term was applied to native villages or bunkhouses. Anglo-Americans adopted the term with both these meanings, usually to designate the resident ...

'' settlement preceding the Mexican ''rancho''.

References

External links

Map of old Spanish and Mexican ranchos in Los Angeles County
{{California history Feliz, Los

Griffith Park History of Hollywood, Los Angeles Los Feliz, Los Angeles 1795 in Alta California 1795 establishments in Alta California 18th century in Los Angeles 19th century in Los Angeles

History

Historic sites of the Rancho

See also

References

External links