MTA Diggers Locate Campo de Cahuenga

The diggers on Lankershim Boulevard knew what they were after.

They just had no idea it would be so impeccably preserved after lying under just 6 inches of earth for about 100 years.

Archeologists working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the subway project showed off their latest find Monday: the original foundation of Campo de Cahuenga. The onetime cattle ranch is where Gen. Andres Pico and Lt. Col. John C. Fremont met in 1847 to sign the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War in California, leading to the state’s entrance into the Union.

After excavating the site for several months, carting away hundreds of pieces of adobe, ceramic floor and roof tiles and animal bones, archeologists and MTA officials briefed reporters on the find Monday.

On display were a handful of artifacts brought back for the day and a 4-foot-by-4-foot corner of the 99-by-30 foundation. The rest had been re-covered with sand after the scientists were through with it to protect the adobe and stone remains from continuing work on the Universal City Red Line station.

As cars and pedestrians passed by unaware, several reporters peered into a shallow hole in the sidewalk where a cluster of smooth, round stones sat embedded in the dark earth. A few feet away, diggers had spread out a sample of adobe pieces found at the site, many of which bore clear imprints of animal feet.

Archeologists said their excavation had answered a century-old question of what befell the ranch house that played a pivotal role in California history.

“We believe it burned,” said John Foster, vice president of Greenwood and Associates, an archeological firm retained by MTA as a condition of receiving federal subway funds. “We have sections of the floor that show where burning wooden beams fell. And much of the adobe just washed away.”

MTA officials have decided to push the site as a National Register of Historic Places candidate. It is now listed as a state landmark and a city cultural-historical monument.

As the subway project has slowly bored through the L.A. basin, plenty of striking artifacts--ranging from 10,000-year-old animal fossils to liquor bottles from early brothels--have emerged. But Foster said the Campo de Cahuenga site is important because it verified the spot where the treaty was signed.

“Only amateur archeologists had ever mapped this area, and their maps were off,” Foster said.

In 1950, the city Department of Recreation and Parks opened a new building on a small park marking the presumed treaty site. L.A.’s postwar development boom precluded any notion of excavating the grounds to find the actual foundation.

“I don’t think they had any idea what they had,” Foster said.

As it turned out, a portion of the 99-by-30-foot foundation lies directly underneath a corner of the city’s monument. A larger section angles under adjacent land where the station will be, and one corner juts under the Lankershim Boulevard sidewalk.

Along with the drive for national historical recognition, MTA officials now have to decide how to preserve the site and open portions of it to the public.

Agency spokesman Steve Chesser said several scenarios have been discussed, including constructing a ramp over the Campo corner that juts into the street.

“They will have to consider this in the final [Universal City] station design,” Chesser said, adding the station is scheduled to open in May 2000.

For now, the Lankershim corner of the foundation has been covered with sand and concrete as a protective measure until the end of the century.

Guy Weddington McCreary, president of the Campo de Cahuenga Historical Memorial Assn., hopes the foundation’s discovery will boost the site’s profile. The flashy, ever-expanding Universal Studios across the street attracts far more attention than the modest historical park.

“It has been kind of a ghost site, sort of there but not there,” McCreary said.

McCreary and other San Fernando Valley historic preservationists know they face an age-old struggle between history and progress.

“If you’re an archeologist and a historian, you want it all preserved,” McCreary said. But he predicts that some of the foundation will likely remain buried beneath Lankershim.

“How are you going to preserve it? It’s in the middle of a very busy street.”