Buried Mission Surfaces in Deal

SANTA CLARITA —  Archeologist Dave Whitley stands on a scrub-covered, wind-swept hill, a site indistinguishable to the naked eye from dozens of other undeveloped hilltops visible from this spot in the wilds of Santa Clarita.

But for Whitley, this hilltop is a special place. In 1804, Spanish missionaries established an outpost here that marked what is believed to be the first white settlement in northern Los Angeles County. Beneath the thick mat of overgrown, brown grasses and scrubs that now obscure the ground, Whitley said, there are remains of buildings and artifacts that could reveal much about how these settlers lived.

“It’s the most significant historical site that I’ve ever run into in northern Los Angeles County,” said Whitley, who was formerly chief archeologist at UCLA.

He believes this site north of Valencia--called the Asistencia San Francisco Xavier by the Spanish--should be preserved.

And it may well be.

The owner of the property, giant developer Newhall Land & Farming Co., has announced it plans to give a total of eight acres, including the site, to the national Archeological Conservancy.

But the gift comes with an asterisk.

The donation agreement states that the land will be turned over to the conservancy only if and when Newhall Ranch, a long-planned but controversial 25,000-home development, gets all the construction permits it needs from federal, county and local authorities.

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Opponents of the project call that cultural blackmail.

“They are not saying, ‘We are going to donate this land no matter what,’ ” said Lynne Plambeck, vice president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment.

“They are saying, ‘We will donate if the project is approved. Come and support this project, which is about your history.’ ”

Local archeologists agreed that the site, which sits on one edge of the proposed 19-square-mile Newhall Ranch development, should be preserved, especially because it could provide new insights into how the missionaries interacted with the Indians of the area.

Whitley, who is a paid consultant to Newhall, said that if the deal fell through and future plans targeted the site for development, builders would be required by law to remove archeologically significant artifacts before construction began.

“But it would be preferable that [the site] would be preserved,” Whitley said.

A Newhall executive noted that cultural and environmental enhancements are now regularly included in major development proposals. “When you are developing a project, you look for public benefits,” said Gloria Glenn, senior vice president of the Newhall Ranch Co., the division overseeing the development.

“People want to know you are being responsible with your development plans.”

But is there a fallback plan for the Asistencia site? What if the development does not go through?

“I don’t even want to envision that,” said Glenn, who has been part of the team working on the project for the last four years.

The Archeological Conservancy, headquartered in Albuquerque, is currently overseeing the preservation of 130 sites across the country and has received numerous site donations from developers in recent years. It’s not unusual, said conservancy President Mark Michel, for those developers to use archeological sites as leverage in their quest for community support.

“It’s part of their presentation package they put together,” said Michel. For example, he said, the Weyerhaeuser timber company has made the donation of a Washington state archeological site contingent on development approval. An Albuquerque developer has offered a similar trade-off for a project in that city.

Michel said that although developers who have entered into agreements with the conservancy did not always get their entire plans approved, none so far has reneged on a site donation.

He said he believes Newhall, in particular, will make good on the gift of the Asistencia site, whatever the outcome of the approval process. “I think they are committed to seeing [the site] preserved, regardless,” he said.

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Although current Newhall plans call for houses to be built within clear view of the site, Michel said encroaching civilization is sometimes a good thing for an archeologically sensitive area.

“We found that people who live near a site take a real interest in it and help protect it,” Michel said. “It’s the sites in remote, unpopulated areas that are much more likely to be vandalized.”

The Asistencia site is extremely rare, Michel said, because most places that played a role in early California mission life have been occupied ever since, submerging the original site under later buildings. Artifacts are often taken by earlier tenants on occupied sites, he said.

“This is the only mission I know of in California where you have the original site pretty much intact,” he said. “From the archeological point of view, it’s loaded with material that will tell us a tremendous amount about the role of the Catholic Church with native people.”

The site was originally noted by the famed Portola expedition in 1769 as a possible location for a mission, Whitley said, probably because of its elevated vantage point and cooling winds. The mission was instead established in San Fernando and the site in what is now Santa Clarita became an outpost for missionaries attempting to convert the Indians in that area. Two adobe buildings were erected there.

When missions were secularized by the Mexican government in the 1830s, the Asistencia became the headquarters for a rancho established in the area. In 1842, Jose Lopez was living there when he made the first documented California gold discovery in a nearby field.

The buildings were eventually abandoned and, according to Glenn, the ruins were torn down in the 1930s to discourage amateur diggers who believed an old rumor that vast quantities of gold were buried at mission sites.

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Currently, nothing can be readily seen of the settlement except for a few stones aligned in a row that Whitley identified as once part of a building foundation.

“I hate to say it, but after a fire when all the vegetation is cleared is the best time to find things,” Whitley said during a tour he and Glenn gave of the site (asking that its exact location not be disclosed, so as not to tempt looters). “At the end of the summer is the worst.”

“One time out here,” Glenn said, “we found a piece of blue and white china.”

On careful inspection of a part of the site Whitley said was once used to dump kitchen waste, some pieces of charred animal bones could be seen. Nearby, a piece of an adobe brick and a small chunk of what was probably once a water jug were found.

All these items were placed back on the ground after being found, waiting for the time when a true archeological dig might take place and the locations of artifacts found can be carefully charted for later analysis.

“From the point of view of Southern California history,” Whitley said, “this site is as good as it gets.”

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Next Step The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on plans for the Newhall Ranch development at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Valencia High School multipurpose room, 27801 N. Dickason Ave., Santa Clarita.