Rancho Los Feliz was a Spanish land concession in present-day

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is the ...

given in 1795 by Spanish Governor

Pedro Fages Pedro Fages (1734–1794) was a Spanish soldier, explorer, first Lieutenant Governor of the Californias under Gaspar de Portolá. Fages claimed the governorship after Portolá's death, acting as governor in opposition to the official governor ...

to José Vicente Feliz. 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 significan ...

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 Am ...

, 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 of 1776, was the Spanish military leader at the Pueblo of Los Angeles. 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 Joseph Manuel María Joaquin Micheltorena y Llano (8 June 1804 – 7 September 1853) was a brigadier general of the Mexican Army, adjutant-general of the same, governor, commandant-general and inspector of the department of Las Californias, th ...

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 jurisdicti ...

of California to the United States following the Mexican–American War, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 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 The California Land Act of 1851 (), enacted following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the admission of California as a state in 1850, established a three-member Public Land Commission to determine the validity of prior Spanish and Mexican l ...

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 acquired ownership of Rancho Los Feliz from the heirs of Maria Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz. Coronel sold Rancho Los Feliz to James Lick, 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 17t ...

. 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 Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywoo ...

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 residen ...

'' 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