Francisco Reyes, alcalde, or mayor of Pueblo de Los Angeles from 1793–1795, established the original Rancho Encino in the northern San Fernando Valley.

[4] Reyes was accused of mistreating the Mission Indians who worked his rancho, and in 1845 Mexican Governor Pío Pico re-granted the property to three of the Tongva Native American workers, recorded as Ramon, Francisco, and Roque, who raised cattle and corn.

Their widows inherited the land and worked it for a few years with Ramon and his family until 1849 when Roman deserted them and his daughter Aguedo, and ran off to the gold fields."

[7] According to the Los Angeles Times, "A petition for Rancho el Encino was presented to the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners in 1852, in which Don Vincent de la Ossa claimed he had purchased one-third of the property in 1849.

The Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach route between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco via Fort Yuma and Los Angeles passed through the rancho, making its first run in the fall of 1858.

[13][14][15] With the cattle market in collapse and besieged by mounting debts, in 1859 De la Osa converted his house into a roadside inn and began to charge patrons for his legendary Californio hospitality.

[16] Don Vicente De la Osa died in 1861, and his widow Rita sold the property to James Thompson in 1867,[16] who raised sheep on the rancho for two years.

Eugene Garnier built a two-story limestone farmhouse similar to the former family home in the French Basque Country,[17] and a brick-lined pond collecting the spring's outflow and shaped like a Spanish guitar.

In a story typical of the San Fernando Valley's rapid urbanization, the adobe was used as the sales office for the post-war subdivisions surrounding it—and was to be torn down and used as commercial property.