Santa Clarita Valley History In Pictures
> ROADS   > LOS ANGELES AQUEDUCT   > CERRO GORDO
Lopez Station
Mission Hills, California


Click image to enlarge

Lopez Station, n.d. Adobe structure built as a family home by Geronimo and Catalina Lopez about 1861 when they purchased 40 acres to the west of the San Fernando Mission.

Used by various stage lines (but not Butterfield, which ran from 1858-1861 only), it came to be known as Lopez Station.

According to the LADWP archive at the Los Angeles Public Library, it included a store as well as the first English-speaking school and U.S. Post Office in the San Fernando Valley. Beginning in 1868 it became an overnight stop (Ripley says eventually the headquarters) for Remi Nadeau's Cerro Gordo Freighting Company, whose mule teams hauled silver-lead ingots from the Cerro Gordo mines to Los Angeles (and carted food and supplies back in the other direction).

Geronimo and Catalina Lopez moved into a new adobe home in 1882 or 1883. It still stands and is known as the Lopez Adobe.

Lopez Station, on the other hand, was demolished in 1910 or 1911 to clear the way for the Los Angeles (aka San Fernando, aka Van Norman) Reservoir, an original component of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. The city of L.A. acquired the Lopez family's 40 acres.

On April 29, 1978, the LADWP and the El Camino Real Parlor No. 324 of the Native Daughters of the Golden West commemorated the Lopez Station site with a marker near the reservoir gate at 15735 Rinaldi Blvd., Mission Hills.


AP1313: 9600 dpi jpeg from original copy print.
LOPEZ STATION
Mission Hills

SEE ALSO:
• Lopez Family History
thumbnail
~1890

thumbnail
n.d.

RETURN TO TOP ]   RETURN TO MAIN INDEX ]   PHOTO CREDITS ]   BIBLIOGRAPHY ]   BOOKS FOR SALE ]
SCVHistory.com is another service of SCVTV, a 501c3 Nonprofit • Site contents ©SCVTV
The site owner makes no assertions as to ownership of any original copyrights to digitized images. However, these images are intended for Personal or Research use only. Any other kind of use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly publication in any medium or format, public exhibition, or use online or in a web site, may be subject to additional restrictions including but not limited to the copyrights held by parties other than the site owner. USERS ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE for determining the existence of such rights and for obtaining any permissions and/or paying associated fees necessary for the proposed use.