Field of Dreams and Land of Gold : History: By the mid-1850s there were 6,000 prospectors--more than the population of the pueblo of Los Angeles at the time--scouring Placerita Canyon for gold.

Sometimes it can be good fortune to take a nap after lunch. After Francisco Lopez took one in the Santa Clarita Valley’s Placerita Canyon one day in 1842, he awoke to find gold.

The discovery, on March 9, 1842, is considered by historians to be the first major gold strike in California, predating by six years John Marshall’s Sutter’s Mill bonanza on the American River just east of Sacramento.

Most people today know nothing about Placerita Canyon gold.

At the time of the strike, “The area was still Spanish land grant property and it never really became big with gringos. Sutter’s Mill helped make California a state,” said Valerie Vartanian, supervisor at Placerita State and County Park. But Placerita Canyon never received a lot of publicity “and many people back east didn’t even know about it.”

Lopez wasn’t prospecting for gold on that March afternoon. He and some friends actually had gone to the San Francisquito Rancho--which encompassed much of the Santa Clarita Valley--to inspect cattle when they stopped to take a break in a rolling field under a large oak tree, just east of the present-day Antelope Valley Freeway.

The most popular version of the story, according to historical journals of the time, is that Lopez settled down for a siesta and dreamed of finding gold. When he awoke, it was lunchtime, and he decided to spice his food by digging up a few wild onions. Clinging to them were flecks of gold.

“How much of it is true, I don’t know,” Vartanian said. Fact or fable, the gold was real and plentiful enough to have the state declare the tree a California Historical Landmark on March 6, 1935, and name it “The Oak of the Golden Dream.”

Another, less romantic version of the Lopez discovery is offered by Curator Elva Meline of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society.

She said that according to “Pre-Marshall Gold in California,” Vol. II, by Emil Bunje and James C. Kean, Lopez’s wife asked him to bring back some wild onions for dinner.

After inspecting cattle in Los Placeritos Canyon on the San Francisquito Rancho with companions Domingo Bermudez and Manuel Cota, Lopez had lunch under a large oak tree and took a traditional siesta. Upon awakening, he remembered his wife’s request and went down a nearby slope to dig for onions.

Elated by his gold find, Lopez and his companions dug up more onions and found additional evidence that his first harvest was not just a fluke. The next day, they went to the San Fernando Mission to report their find.

According to a journal of the Historical Society of Southern California, Lopez and his friends sent samples to the governor in Santa Barbara and immediately petitioned him for the mining title. No record has ever been found that the title was granted, according to historians, but one chronicle of the time noted that the original gold was made into earrings for the governor’s wife.

The lack of title didn’t stop Lopez from mining the territory. In 1843 he imported 30 experienced prospectors from the Mexican state of Sonora to help him work the area for “placer gold,” so-named because it normally is found in quiet or placid areas of running streams. Placerita Canyon, which takes its name from the same word, has many such placid streams.

“When mountains erode,” said Vartanian, “all of the bits and pieces of rock go into the stream and are deposited as sediment. Some of the pieces are gold flakes. Gold is fairly heavy and will settle down.”

By the mid-1850s there were about 6,000 prospectors--more than the population of the pueblo of Los Angeles at the time--scouring the Santa Clarita Valley for gold. A chronicle of the time noted that the canyon became the first tourist attraction in Southern California, with out-of-towners regularly making the 40-mile trip from the city to the gold fields to watch men recovering an average of $2 worth of the precious metal a day.

By the time Lopez was last mentioned in historical documents in 1854, he and others had retrieved more than $2 million in gold from the area’s streams.

From a historical perspective, Meline said, researchers consider the Placerita Canyon gold discovery a “medium-sized” find that was far overshadowed by the mammoth Mother Lode at Sutter’s Mill. But, she added, Lopez should be given proper credit in state history.

“It was not a big find and it is not a large area, so it didn’t take very long to mine the canyon,” she said, “but the Lopez discovery had a direct bearing on the economic development of the future state. It brought people into the area.”

Placerita Canyon gold was the first native American gold ever coined in the United States. A bit more than 18 ounces of Placerita

gold, shipped via the Cape Horn route, arrived at the Philadelphia Mint on July 8, 1843. The gold was valued at $344.75, or more than $19 per ounce, at the time.

A family by the name of Walker eventually bought the Placerita Canyon property and later deeded it to the state in 1956. Now operated by the county, the 350-acre park with its Oak of the Golden Dream are off-limits for gold prospecting, and violators may be fined.

“You can’t go into a park and take the trees and plant them in your back yard, and you can’t pan for gold,” said Frank Hovore, administrator of the park that encompasses the original gold discovery site. “Under the mining rules of 1872, ownership of the land constitutes a legal claim. That means the state is the legal owner. If you come in and take gold off of another’s claim, it’s called claim jumping. You used to get shot for that.”

While no one gets shot for gold mining in Placerita Canyon these days, park officials say, they still find people occasionally trying to pay off their mortgages by illegal panning.

“This is a wildlife sanctuary, which protects everything, including rocks, acorns, leaves and gold. It’s all considered the same,” Vartanian said.

“Hiking is allowed, as is picnicking in restricted areas, but no consumptive or abusive types of recreation. No off-road vehicles, bikes or hunting.”

Park officials say there is still some gold in the area, but the amount is small since the area was so heavily mined for so long.

“In the eight years I’ve been here,” Vartanian said, “I’ve pulled a lot of people out of the canyon, but they’ve had no gold to show for it.”