Bones Thought to Be Settlers’ Unearthed

Workers clearing ground in Castaic for a housing development unearthed the skeletal remains of eight people believed to be part of a pioneer family who settled the area more than 100 years ago.

The bones, surrounded by crumbling coffins, are thought to be those of the Jenkins family--ranchers who settled the area in the 1890s. A forensic archeologist is conducting tests to determine when the bodies were buried.

A longtime resident said she warned officials of the Genstar Land Co. that crews working on the 4,000-unit North Lake housing development last week were digging dangerously close to the old family cemetery, near the intersection of Lake Hughes and Castaic roads.

“A lot of us old-timers knew about it,” said Donna Chesebrough, 46, a third-generation resident of the truck-stop town off Interstate 5, 60 miles north of Los Angeles. “When I was young, in the ‘60s, we’d go hiking up there in the mountains with our BB guns. I remember seeing three crosses. They were old and falling apart even then.”

Los Angeles County coroner investigators were called to the site Tuesday after a lawyer for Genstar alerted authorities to the find. Work has been halted at the site.

“What we wanted to know was if these bodies were buried after a crime,” said coroner investigator Erik D. Arbuthnot. But there is no evidence of foul pay, he said.

Arbuthnot said he and another investigator identified the bones of seven people who appeared to be adults, as well as the skeletal remains of a child who probably died at birth. There were too few bones recovered to determine the sexes, he said.

The bones, as well as a metal cross that sat atop one of the coffins, were taken to the coroner’s office in Los Angeles for protection, authorities said.

“Neighborhood kids have apparently been coming and digging up and collecting the bones,” Arbuthnot said.

Arbuthnot said he was told by several longtime residents of the area, including Chesebrough, that the bones were those of William W. Jenkins and his descendants.

Jenkins, according to local lore, was a rough-and-tumble horse breeder and pioneer oilman who liked to play poker. For decades, he claimed to have purchased the rights to Alcatraz Island, only to have lost the property in a Chicago card game.

He also had a reputation as a swindler. In 1895, Jenkins heard that swampland could be purchased cheaply under a special government program so long as the land was surveyed by boat. Castaic had no swamp, so Jenkins--following the letter of the law--mounted a boat on wheels and had it pulled by horses.

In that way, he claimed most of the land between his Lazy Z ranch and the current site of Magic Mountain in Santa Clarita.

His family’s violent and long-running feud with another Castaic hill family, the Chormicle clan, cemented Jenkins’ local notoriety. The feud was said to have started in 1890 in a dispute over a parcel of land. What followed over the next 26 years was a series of barn-burnings, ambushes and horseback gun battles that claimed as many as 22 lives.

“Yup, that’s the same family,” said Chesebrough, a housewife who counts herself among a dwindling number of local old-timers.

She watched Tuesday as coroner investigators at the site removed bones and artifacts, including old-fashioned pine coffins, narrow at the feet and wider at the shoulders. The tiny baby’s casket had a plate of glass over the infant’s face.

Investigators also recovered a woman’s broach, buttons, cross and rosary. “It was eerie to look at,” Chesebrough said.

Gary Reinoehl, an archeologist for the state Office of Historic Preservation in Sacramento, said there are no laws governing inactive cemeteries unless they contain the remains of Native Americans.

He said bones would be regarded as an archeological discovery. Reinoehl said he asked that the developer hire an archeologist to excavate and evaluate the site before continuing work.

Dennis Moser, vice president of San Diego-based Genstar, said his company intends to cooperate fully with authorities.