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 San Francisco had been inherited twenty years earlier, in 1853, by Ygnacio del Valle following the death of his father, Antonio del Valle, who originally received the Mexican land grant in 1839.
Financial hardship and a devastating drought in the 1860s forced the Del Valle family to sell much of their land, leading to the 1873 sheriff’s sale…