GOLDEN DREAMS A VIVID PART OF THE REGION'S EARLY HISTORY.Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer As the sun moved high overhead, Francisco Lopez and a friend stopped for lunch in the shade of a tree. Lopez, a rancher, and one of his cowboys had been searching for stray horses all morning in Placerita Canyon, but so far had found none. Lopez opened his saddle bags and pulled out the tortillas and dried beef he had carried with him that morning. The horses could wait. He was hungry. The two men sat down to eat when the tops of some wild onions peeking above the ground nearby caught Lopez's eye. The perfect addition to spice up his dull lunch, he thought, bending to grab the onion tops. With a firm tug, up came the onions - and more. Something yellow flashed in the sunlight amid the balls of brown dirt that clung clung v. Past tense and past participle of cling. clung Verb the past of cling clung cling to the onions' roots. Could it be? Flakes of gold dust? Francisco drew his knife and dug a little more. More pieces of the precious metal surfaced. The stray horses - and their lunches - forgotten, the two men sped back home, stopping along the way to show everyone they met the wonderful find. The news spread quickly through the sparsely sparse adj. spars·er, spars·est Occurring, growing, or settled at widely spaced intervals; not thick or dense. [Latin sparsus, past participle of spargere, to scatter. inhabited San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. of 1842 and on to the nearby Pueblo of Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. . Later that year, a second discovery was made nearby, in San Feliciana Canyon, just a few miles northwest of modern-day Newhall. After the gold tested out at $17 an ounce, would-be millionaires flooded the area, triggering California's first gold rush. But it didn't last long. The shiny stuff was hard to mine; it was estimated that a hard day's work (Naut.) the account or reckoning of a ship's course for twenty-four hours, from noon to noon. See also: Day would net a man only $2 worth of gold dust. Within two years, miners reaped a total of only $80,000 to $100,000 from the two gold fields Gold Fields Limited is one of the world’s largest unhedged producers of gold, providing investors with maximum leverage to the gold price. The company was formed in 1998 with the amalgamation of the gold assets of Gold Fields of South Africa Limited and Gencor Limited. . Still, Lopez, with visions of riches dancing in his head, tried to convince Gov. Juan Alvarado to grant him exclusive placer mining placer mining: see mining. placer mining Oldest method of recovering gold from alluvial deposits. It takes advantage of gold's high density, which causes it to sink more rapidly from moving water than the lighter siliceous materials with which it is rights to the area where he found the gold. But he was unable to prove clear title to the land. No one knows whether he returned to mine there without official authorization. If he did, he found much less than the unlimited treasure he envisioned; five years later, he and his brother traded their land, known then as Rancho ran·cho n. pl. ran·chos Southwestern U.S. 1. A hut or group of huts for housing ranch workers. 2. A ranch. Tujunga, to former mission Indian Miguel Triunfo for the smaller Rancho Cahuenga, now a part of Burbank. Gold-seekers would later name the tree Lopez found the gold-yielding onions growing under the ``Oak of the Golden Dream.'' It still stands today. |
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