Del Valle Family Played a Starring Role in Early California

In 1884, writer Helen Hunt Jackson became enchanted by the tree-shaded Ventura County ranch during a visit there. She used it as the setting for the fictional Moreno Rancho in her quintessential California romance, "Ramona," a fanciful novel that shaped the nation's idea of California for decades.

Because of the book's instant and enduring popularity--enhanced by sketches of the setting--the rancho created a small tourist and film industry boomlet all by itself.

The place soon became known as the "Home of Ramona" and a physical incarnation of the vanished californio pioneer lifestyle and of its version of Romeo and Juliet: the tragic Ramona and her dashing Indian lover, the doomed Alessandro.

But in real life, Rancho Camulos is where three generations of Del Valle pioneers built their families and political careers over almost a century, with love stories of their own and California's first gold strike.

Most of the ancestral Del Valle spread has long since been sold. But from the last years of Mexican rule through the first 74 years of California statehood--1839 to 1924--the Del Valles were among the most prominent families in Southern California.

In 1839, Gov. Juan B. Alvarado awarded soldier Antonio Seferino del Valle 48,612 acres of Rancho San Francisco, a swath running 22 miles from what is now Valencia to Piru, not far from where Piru Creek empties into the Santa Clara River.

When Del Valle died two years later, the property was divided among his second wife, Jacoba, and the children from his two marriages. Ygnacio, the oldest son, carved out 1,800 acres on the western edge surrounding the former Indian village of Camulos, which means juniper tree. He built corrals and stocked them with cattle.

His ranch foreman, Francisco Lopez, was out searching for stray cattle in 1842 when he yanked a few wild onions out of the ground and found flakes of gold among the roots--half a dozen years before the gold strike up north.

It was nowhere near as spectacular as Sutter's Mill, but it spurred a minor gold rush that drained workers from ranches throughout the region. The Del Valles mined too, and family members fashioned rosary beads and jewelry from the takings. Mining came to a stop during the Mexican War, when Ygnacio Del Valle blew up the mine's entrance, fearing that Yankee troops would steal the gold.