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.[3] 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.[4]
The grant was confirmed in 1843 by Mexican Governor Manuel Micheltorena to María Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz.[5] María Ygnacia Feliz was the wife of one of the sons of Anastacio María Feliz. Anastacio was probably a cousin of José Vicente Feliz. When María's husband died, she petitioned for a grant in her name and in the name of her son José Antonio Feliz. Governor Micheltorena granted it to her in 1843. She did not remarry.
In 1863, lawyer Antonio F. Coronel acquired ownership of Rancho Los Feliz from the heirs of María Ygnacia Verdugo de Feliz. Coronel sold Rancho Los Feliz to James Lick, a wealthy businessman from San Francisco. Lick died in 1876.
In 1882, Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith acquired 4,071 acres (16.5 km2) of Rancho Los Feliz. Colonel Griffith donated to the city of Los Angeles 3,015 acres (12.2 km2) (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.
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).[9][10]
^John Schmal & Jennifer Vo, 2004,A Mexican-American Family of California: In the Service of Three Flags, Heritage Books,ISBN978-0-7884-2448-9
^Ogden Hoffman, 1862, Reports of Land Cases Determined in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Numa Hubert, San Francisco