Report Says Remains Not Those of 1890s Gunslinger

Human remains accidentally unearthed by workers at the site of a planned housing development last month belong to an infant and four ranch hands employed by William W. Jenkins--not to the gunslinging 1890s rancher himself as initially thought, researchers said Thursday.

The conclusion came from Statistical Research Inc., a Tucson-based archeological consulting firm that prepared a report for Genstar Land Co., a San Diego-based company building North Lake, a 4,000-unit project near Lake Hughes and Castaic roads.

The report revises earlier accounts that eight bodies were found in January and disputes speculation by longtime local residents that the remains were most likely those of Jenkins and his immediate family.

The report also states a 1919 obituary in The Times reported Jenkins had died of an illness while visiting friends in Los Angeles, not in a shootout with a member of a rival Castaic family, as local lore has it.

Jenkins was reportedly cremated, The Times article said, so the research firm concluded the bones on the site were not his.

Citing extensive excavation of a roughly 100-by-150-foot plot, Dave Maxwell of Statistical Research said no other bones are expected to be found.

“If there are more in that area, I’d be stunned,” said Maxwell, an archeologist in the company’s Redlands office who supervised the Castaic project.

Genstar executives are to receive the report next week. Construction work has resumed at the site.

Jenkins attained fame a century ago as a hard-charging, card-playing oil-industry pioneer and horse breeder who headed a prominent Castaic family. Some buildings on the family’s Lazy Z ranch are still in use in the small truck-stop community 60 miles north of downtown Los Angeles.

His family’s violent, long-running feud with the Chormicle clan sealed his spot in history. The feud was said to have started in 1890 over a land parcel. A series of barn-burnings, ambushes and horseback gun battles over the next 26 years claimed as many as 22 lives, local historians say.

The bodies, all male except for the infant, whose gender could not be determined, were found about 5 to 7 feet apart in pine coffins, the report said. The infant’s age was put at between newborn and 6 months.

“They were in a nice, neat row,” Maxwell said. He said the site was atop a small hill overlooking a new residential subdivision.

Cause of death was not determined.

The report said the site was probably a small private cemetery. There are no state laws governing inactive cemeteries unless they contain remains of Native Americans, which must be turned over to their presumed descendants. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office, which removed the bones and some small artifacts from the site, has ruled out foul play, Maxwell said.