Rancho Las Virgenes
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Rancho Las Vírgenes was a land grant in the
Santa Monica Mountains The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in ...
and
Simi Hills The Simi Hills are a low rocky mountain range of the Transverse Ranges in eastern Ventura County and western Los Angeles County, of southern California, United States. Geography The Simi Hills are aligned east-west and run for , and average aro ...
, in present day western Los Angeles County, California. The lands of the Rancho Las Vírgenes included present day
Agoura Hills Agoura Hills () is a city in the Santa Monica Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Its population was 20,330 at the 2010 census, which decreased to 20,299 in 2020. It is in the eastern Conejo Valley between the S ...
, Oak Park, and
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and part of the
Santa Monica Mountains The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in ...
. It was given in 1802 by Spanish Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga to Miguel Ortega, but was abandoned after his death in 1809. Nemecio Domínguez and Domingo Carrillo received a Mexican land grant in 1834. ''Nuestra Señora la Reina de las Vírgenes'' translates as "Our Lady the Queen of the Virgins".


History

The
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 ...
(Native American) village in this area was called ''Wisyáxnga'', which means "place of the pine" in the Fernandeño language, a dialect of the Tongva language. Bartholomé Miguel de Ortega (1751–1809) received a provisional Spanish grant in 1800 from Governor José Joaquín de Arrillaga for Rancho Santa Gertrudis de las Vírgenes / Rancho Nuestra Señora la Reina of las Vírgenes, or simply referred to as Rancho Las Vírgenes. After the death of Miguel Ortega in 1809, the Ortega family returned to
Pueblo de Los Ángeles El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (English: ''The town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels''), shortened to Pueblo de los Ángeles, was the Spanish civilian ''pueblo'' settled in 1781, which by the 20th century became the ...
. By 1817 the rancho was widely acknowledged to be abandoned, and since the original grant was only provisional, the land was considered legally vacant according to Spanish precedent, and the Franciscans at
Mission San Fernando Rey de España Mission San Fernando Rey de España is a Spanish mission in the Mission Hills community of Los Angeles, California. The mission was founded on 8 September 1797 at the site of Achooykomenga, and was the seventeenth of the twenty-one Spanish mis ...
petitioned Governor Solá to cede them the land to use as pasturage for their cattle. In 1833, Nemesio Domínguez of Los Ángeles and Domingo Antonio Ygnacio Carrillo of Santa Barbara, submitted a petition to Governor Figueroa for a tract of land twelve leagues west of Los Angeles, known as Las Vírgenes. They argued that the land was not needed by the mission, and that it had been legally vacant since Miguel Ortega's death. In 1834, they were granted Rancho Las Vírgenes. In 1837, Governor Alvarado granted the Triunfo addition to the Las Virgenes grant to Nemecio's father, José Maria Dominguez, and a new survey, or ''diseño'', was drawn. In 1845, Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes (1792–1863) purchased the Rancho Las Virgenes from her uncle Jose Maria Dominguez. Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes was a widow with 14 children. Maria Machado’s husband, José Jacinto Reyes (1788–1837), was the son of
Juan Francisco Reyes Juan Francisco Reyes López (10 July 1938 – 10 January 2019) was a Guatemalan politician who served as Vice President of Guatemala from 14 January 2000 to 14 January 2004 in the cabinet of president Alfonso Portillo. In 1989, Reyes was one of ...
. 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
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provided that the land grants would be honored. As required by the Land Act of 1851, the heirs of Domingo Carrillo filed a claim for Rancho Las Virgenes with the Public Land Commission in 1853 for an undivided half share of the 1834 grant, but the claim was rejected in 1854. Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes filed a claim with the Land Commission in 1852. The commission confirmed her claim in 1854, and the U.S. District Court for Southern California approved this decision in 1857. An appeal was dismissed in 1858, and the claim
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 ...
at in 1883. Although still sizeable, the total area was considerably less than the original land grant. The apparent reason for the change was due to a misinterpretation of the 1837 ''diseño'' which José Dominguez had drawn. As a result of this error, the United States considered the excluded land to be part of the public domain and allowed private claimants to settle. This surplus land was surveyed and opened to homesteading in 1896. Many settlers may have already moved into the area by that time, in anticipation of the courts' decision, but their claims could not be documented formally until they filed for patent after 1896. José Maria Dominguez transferred title to his son, Jose Apolonio Dominguez (1816–), who left it his daughter Dominga Dominguez. Dominga Dominguez
sued - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil acti ...
homesteader Brigido Botiller and others, to recover possession of Rancho Las Virgenes. In '' Botiller v. Dominguez'', the
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
agreed that the grant was "perfect" (i.e. had been properly granted by the government of Mexico to Nemecio Dominguez and Domingo Carrillo in 1834), however as no claim for the grant had made to the Land Commission, no patent could be issued.


Historic sites of the Rancho

*Reyes Adobe. Jose Paulino Reyes, the son of Jose Jacinto Reyes and Maria Antonia Machado, built the adobe home in about 1850, which was owned by the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department before transfer to the City of Agoura Hills. Reyes Adobe
/ref> * Vejar Adobe. The two-story Monterey-type adobe near Strawberry Hill was built in about 1850 by Juan Crisostomo Vejar (1815–1877), who married Maria Engracia Reyes (daughter of Maria Antonia Machado de Reyes). It was a stop along the
Butterfield Overland Stage Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...
route in the 1860s and became known as Vejar Station. The building stood at Roadside Drive and Cornell Road, Agoura until the early 1900s, when it was razed.


See also

* Virgenes, California


References


External links


Diseño del Rancho Las Virgenes
{{California history Virgenes, Las Las Virgenes Santa Monica Mountains Simi Hills Conejo Valley Agoura Hills, California Westlake Village, California 1802 in Alta California