King's Station, also known as Moore's and Hollandsville, was a stagecoach station of the Butterfield Overland Mail 1st Division between 1858 and 1861 in southern California. [1]
The adobe building also served other travelers on the Stockton - Los Angeles Road, and other uses, until its 1928 destruction.
King's Station was located in the lower section of San Francisquito Canyon, in the Sierra Pelona Mountains. It was 10 miles (16 km) south of Widow Smith's Station near San Francisquito Pass, and was 12 miles (19 km) north of Lyons Station in the present-day Newhall neighborhood of Santa Clarita. [2] Its present-day site is along San Francisquito Canyon Road, about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of its intersection with Copper Hill Drive. [3]
The watering place on San Francisquito Creek was first known as "Moore's" in 1854, and was located on the Stockton - Los Angeles Road wagon route, on the section between the San Fernando Valley and the San Joaquin Valley.
By 1858, when the New York Herald reporter Waterman L. Ormsby passed through on the Butterfield Overland Mail it was known as King's Station. [2] In 1860 the station was referred to as Hollandsville. [4] [5]
King's Station was 12 miles (19 km) north of Lyons Station (Hart's Station) in Santa Clarita. It was 12 miles (19 km) south of Widow Smith's Station (Clayton's Station, Major Gordon's Station) in upper San Francisquito Canyon near San Francisquito Pass. [1]
About 1880, Charles Raggio, acquired the ranch and adobe station building from the Perea family, and it became known as the Raggio Ranch.
Later in 1894, the adobe was a post office on the Raggio Ranch for the surrounding settlement known as Hollands or Hollandsville. [6]
In March 1928 the massive flood caused by the collapse of the St. Francis Dam washed away the old stagecoach station, along with the Hollands and Raggio Ranch buildings. The dam had been upstream in San Francisquito Canyon.
The only present day indicator of the station's location is the Ruiz family cemetery, that survived by being just above the flood's crest. The station had been located just below the cemetery. [7] [8] The Ruiz Family Cemetery remains on private land, at 29615 North San Francisquito Canyon Road in Santa Clarita. A mobile home, placed on the property in 1963, is located below the cemetery. [9]
The Raggio Ranch was rebuilt and remained in the family until after the 1940s. [10]
Butterfield Overland Mail was a stagecoach service in the United States operating from 1858 to 1861. It carried passengers and U.S. Mail from two eastern termini, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. The routes from each eastern terminus met at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then continued through Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and California ending in San Francisco. On March 3, 1857, Congress authorized the U.S. postmaster general, at that time Aaron V. Brown, to contract for delivery of the U.S. mail from St. Louis to San Francisco. Prior to this, U.S. Mail bound for the Far West had been delivered by the San Antonio and San Diego Mail Line since June 1857.
San Francisquito Canyon is a canyon created through erosion of the Sierra Pelona Mountains by the San Francisquito Creek, in Los Angeles County, Southern California.
Lake Hughes is an unincorporated community in northern Los Angeles County, California. It is in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, northwest of Palmdale and north of the Santa Clarita Valley, in the Angeles National Forest. It is on the sag pond waters of Lake Hughes and Elizabeth Lake. The community is rural in character, with a population of 649 in 2010, but also has a strong recreational element centered on the three lakes in the vicinity. The community of Elizabeth Lake is located just east of Lake Hughes, sharing the same ZIP code.
Santa Clarita is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most populous in California, and the 103rd-most populous city in the United States. It is located about 30 miles (48 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and occupies 70.75 square miles (183.2 km2) of land in the Santa Clarita Valley, along the Santa Clara River. It is a classic example of a U.S. edge city, satellite city, or boomburb.
The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San Andreas fault and lies within and is surrounded by the Angeles National Forest.
Warner's Ranch, near Warner Springs, California, was notable as a way station for large numbers of emigrants on the Southern Emigrant Trail from 1849 to 1861, as it was a stop on both the Gila River Trail and the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line (1859-1861). It was also operated as a pioneering cattle ranch.
Oak Grove Butterfield Stage Station is located in the western foothills of the Laguna Mountains, in northern San Diego County, California. It is located on State Route 79, 13 miles (21 km) northwest of Warner Springs and Warner's Ranch. The station was built on the site of Camp Wright, an 1860s Civil War outpost.
Warner Springs is set of springs and a small unincorporated community in northern San Diego County, California. Warner Springs is on the Pacific Crest Trail.
Green Valley is a census-designated place in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, in Los Angeles County, California. It lies at an elevation of 2936 feet. The population was 1,027 at the 2010 census.
Rancho Temescal was a farming outpost of Mission San Luis Rey de Francia, one of the 21 Franciscan missions established in California by Spain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Mission was located on the coast where Oceanside, California, is today. The Rancho was settled in 1819 by Leandro Serrano, and became the first non-native settlement within the boundaries of what would become Riverside County, California.
The Butterfield Overland Mail in California was created by the United States Congress on March 3, 1857, and operated until June 30, 1861. Subsequently, other stage lines operated along the Butterfield Overland Mail in route in Alta California until the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived in Yuma, Arizona in 1877.
The Lyons Station Stagecoach Stop,, was a tavern and stagecoach stop near the southwest corner of Newhall Avenue and Sierra Highway, by Eternal Valley Cemetery. The site is located in the present day Newhall section of Santa Clarita, in Los Angeles County, California.
The Stockton–Los Angeles Road, also known as the Millerton Road, Stockton–Mariposa Road, Stockton–Fort Miller Road or the Stockton–Visalia Road, was established about 1853 following the discovery of gold on the Kern River in Old Tulare County. This route between Stockton and Los Angeles followed by the Stockton–Los Angeles Road is described in "Itinerary XXI. From Fort Yuma to Benicia, California", in The Prairie Traveler: A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions by Randolph Barnes Marcy. The Itinerary was derived from the report of Lieutenant R. S. Williamson on his topographical survey party in 1853, that was in search of a railroad route through the interior of California.
San Francisquito Creek, in Los Angeles County, is a tributary stream of the Santa Clara River. It drains the south facing slopes of the Sierra Pelona Mountains of the San Gabriel Mountains within the Transverse Range of California, United States.
San Francisquito Pass is a mountain pass in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, located northeast of Green Valley and Santa Clarita, in northern Los Angeles County, California.
Tejon Creek, originally in Spanish Arroyo de Tejon, is a stream in Kern County, California. Its headwaters are located on the western slopes of the Tehachapi Mountains, and it flows northwest into the southern San Joaquin Valley.
Mud Spring, formerly called Aquaje Lodoso, is a spring and historic site in the western Antelope Valley, within northern Los Angeles County, southern California.
Widow Smith's Station, also known as Major Gordon's Station and Clayton's Station, was a stagecoach station of the Butterfield Overland Mail 1st Division from 1858 to 1861 in southern California.
Cottonwoods Station was a stop on the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line and later the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach station in El Paso County, Texas.
The Temescal Butterfield stage station is the site where the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach stopped to deliver mail and get fresh horses in what is now Riverside County, California. The Temescal Butterfield stage station was designated a California Historic Landmark (No.188) on June 20, 1935. The site of the Temescal Butterfield stage station is currently near the City of Corona along Temescal Canyon Road. The first stagecoach with mail and passengers departed Tipton, Missouri on September 15, 1858. The stagecoach stopped at the Temescal Butterfield stage station and arrived at the Butterfield Overland Mail Company Los Angeles Building on October 7, 1858. The Butterfield Overland Mail Company closed in 1861.