Residents invited to celebrate history

Residents invited to celebrate history

The Las Virgenes Valley in Calabasas is a California historian’s delight. To share in one of the many facets of its multicolored drama, one may participate with the Malibu Creek State Park Rangers and Docents at 3 p.m. Sat., May 31 at the dedication of the Sepulveda Adobe, Phase I.

This Adobe is one link in the magnificent panorama of Calabasas history.

At one time the Las Virgenes Valley was the bustling village of Talopop, home of the Lulapin People of the Chumash Nation. On Feb. 22, 1776, the same year as the U. S. Declaration of Independence, their lives were changed forever, as the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition camped in this area with 240 colonists, 500 head of cattle and 400 beasts of burden, all on their way to the Bay Area with a charter for a Spanish pueblo, which is now San Francisco, and orders to establish a presidio and two missions.

A young adolescent on this expedition, Jose Bartolome Tapia, fell in love with the area and in 1802, the same decade as the Lewis and Clark Expeditions, he returned to this valley and received an extensive grant from the king of Spain for land on which to graze his cattle. Tapia Park in this valley is a vestigial remnant of his holdings.

"Four score and seven years" after the Anza Expedition, in 1863, the same year as Lincoln’s Address at Gettysburg, a grandson of Bartolo Tapia, Pedro Alcantara Sepulveda, built an adobe for his wife, Maria Magdalena Soledad Dominguez. This adobe is owned by the California State Park system. It has undergone extensive repairs and is celebrating its Phase I dedication. This dedication celebrates not only the past, but also the present and the future of the Calabasas area.

The location of the adobe is on the northwest corner of the Las Virgenes-Malibu Canyon State Scenic Highway and Mulholland Highway in Malibu Creek State Park. For more information, please call (310) 457-8140.

Robin G. Mitchell

Torrance