Two months before making contact with the Indigenous Bay Area village of Ssatumnumo, the 1769 expedition of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá arrived at the Native American village of Siutcanga in what is today a suburban section of greater Los Angeles. They were reportedly welcomed hospitably by the Tongva residents of “The Place of the Oaks,” which the Spanish adopted as “Los Encinos.” With a natural spring and plenty of shade, the land was ideally located just north of the rolling Santa Monica Mountains range in what is today the southern portion of the San Fernando Valley. It’s no wonder the community had made their home here for thousands of years.
The Portolá expedition eventually moved north, but it didn’t take long for other outsiders to find their way to Los Encinos – including, eventually, a swindling silent film star with big plans to cash in on the Olympics.
Long a vital gathering space for Tongva, Chumash, Tataviam and other tribes, by 1797, Siutcanga had fallen into the hands of missionaries from the Catholic Church, and its people were enslaved. Over time, the property passed through various private hands before landing at the feet of Don Vicente de la Osa in 1849. De la Osa built the adobe farmhouse that still stands at the site in order to work the land, using the water and shade from the famous place to keep his cattle happy, before eventually converting the property into an inn and tavern for stagecoach travelers.
After de la Osa’s passing, the property was purchased by the thirty-something sheepherding Garnier brothers from French Basque Country, who made major capital investments in the rancho. They built a two-story limestone maison that reminded them of their home in the Pyrenees and included a brick-lined flamenco guitar-shaped pool that collected thousands of gallons of warm spring water daily. It’s considered to be one of the first mineral springs baths along the El Camino Real, and “the most complete roadside inn in Southern California,” according to traveling journalist Ben C. Truman’s 1874 book “Semi-tropical California.”
FILE: Los Encinos State Historic Park in Encino, Calif. (Brian Baer/California State Parks)
The Garniers transformed the inside of the old adobe into a grand salon, with hand-painted walls creating an illusion of marble and wooden textures. Their roadhouse and tavern were popular with long-haul travelers and hungry local dignitaries, and a night at the Garniers usually included “hand-selected wines, imported cheese, and freshly prepared olives from their ranch,” according to signs at the park. After dining, the gracious hosts would offer their guests fine liqueur, good cigars and a game of cards.
In addition to providing the finest dining in the San Fernando Valley, the Garniers continued to raise their prize-winning flock of 25,000 sheep. Their premium merino wool from the San Fernando Valley was sold throughout Europe. But when the Southern Pacific Railroad arrived north of the rancho in 1876, it effectively ended stagecoach service and thus the Garniers’ diners and lodgers.
Once again, the rancho changed hands (mostly amongst Basque owners) until, in 1915, a large slice of the 4,600-acre property was deeded to William Hamilton Hay, a notable Los Angeles real estate investor. The sale was described by the LA Times as the “largest body of land ever subdivided in Los Angeles City Limits.” The land that would become Encino, along with most of the rest of the San Fernando Valley, had been annexed by the city of Los Angeles earlier that year, and the semirural area was quickly becoming a suburban bedroom community.
A view of the San Fernando Valley, Calif., 1920s. (Camerique/Getty Images)
A reservoir was built in the hills to accommodate the thirsty subdivisions developing among the open fields of Encino. New commercial developments popped up, and now that singular roadhouse had to compete with numerous restaurants along the old trail that was Ventura Boulevard, a major thoroughfare. Various lessees operated different businesses at Los Encinos, trying to lure passersby with the name “Encino Hot Springs.” It was the kind of place you could visit for a Southern fried chicken dinner featuring a Filipino stringed orchestra, and perhaps – after the introduction of national Prohibition in 1920 – an illicit cocktail.
On Oct. 2, 1923, the Los Angeles Examiner reported that a man and woman were found guilty of bootlegging. They were arrested by “Federal dry agents” at Encino Hot Springs on Ventura Boulevard and were “found guilty of bootlegging by a jury.” The man was sentenced to three months in jail and his female companion had to pay a $225 fine.
Encino quickly became a semi-hidden home to Hollywood luminaries who sought a “back-to-the-land” California rancho lifestyle with proximity to the Hollywood backlots like RKO Encino Ranch. Actors like Roy Rogers, Clark Gable, Edward Everett Horton and honorary Mayor Al Jolson were some of the earliest homeowners and helped to attract an ever-widening social circle for the up-and-coming community.
FILE: Billy Franey sits with Bill Cody in a scene from the film “King Of The Saddle,” 1926. (Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Among those basking in the afterglow was an up-and-coming stuntman turned movie star with an Icelandic name and Canadian roots. B-list actor Bill Cody, whose real name was reportedly Páll Valtýr Pálsson, leased a portion of the ancient Siutcanga lands in the 1930s in hopes of aligning himself with the biggest names in Hollywood. He even went so far as to put up signs along Ventura Boulevard for his own “Rancho De Bill Cody,” a planned resort ground with global aspirations.
After moving to Los Angeles in 1922, Cody wowed early directors with his equestrian acumen and whip-cracking skills, landing features like “Dangerous Odds,” “The Fighting Sheriff,” “The Galloping Cowboy,” “King of the Saddle” and “Born to Battle.” Eventually, low-budget studio Monogram Pictures signed Bill and Andy, a 12-year-old co-star, to do an eight-picture run of buddy Westerns.
But by then, Cody had bigger dreams.
“Western Racketeers,” starring Bill Cody (grabbing shirt), 1934. (LMPC via Getty Images)
In December 1930, the Van Nuys News reported that the Encino Hot Springs site, owned by Cody and a collection of partners, was poised to become a “rendezvous of artists in every endeavor, for ‘Old California’ is to be exemplified throughout in the furnishings of each and every room.”
Cody and his partners claimed that they’d generated much interest around the project, including the 1932 Olympic Games Committee, who were considering hosting the games right here in Encino – at “the mecca of all who love old California of yesteryear,” reported the Van Nuys News Press.
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“The entire deal revolves around a dream and the dreamer is Bill Cody,” the News Press story continued. “… Each time he visited the ranch he visualized other features until today there is grouped in his mind’s eye a series of Indian, Mexican, and Spanish Villages, a golf course, a polo field, a riding academy, tennis courts and foremost in the picture a Dude Ranch with numerous cottages located in attractive settings.”
In February of 1931, 17 polo ponies arrived to be “used on the new polo field that is being rushed to completion. The horses are also rented out for riding purposes … a real show place of the San Fernando Valley.”
FILE: Athletes of the Los Angeles Athletic Club train under the supervision of the California Olympic Contest Association are, left to right: Marion Fitting, Anne O’Brien, Lois Welch and Evelyn Furtsch. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
And it may have all been a show. Apparently, soon after the horses arrived at the academy “their owners sensing an asserted tangled state of affairs came again and took them away.”
By April, dreams of a sprawling Rancho De Bill Cody started to publicly fall apart. Headlines read “Super Dude Ranch Goes Awry” and “RanchDreamer In Jail House.”
Cody had claimed to have the “enthusiastic support” from “the Olympic Games Committee, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and various other organizations which police said were never too numerous for the two to mention in their selling operations.”
The Van Nuys News Press wrote: “Bill Cody, dreamer of dreams is today languishing in jail with his dreams turned into a nightmare.” He and partner G.J. Kahn were held on three counts of grand theft and, unable to pay their $2,500 bail, they spent a few nights in jail. One of the stipulations for leasing the property was that they’d spend $50,000 to improve the property. Another partner who was supposed to be the moneybags of the operation fled to England after only spending a few hundred dollars.
“Frontier Days,” starring Bill Cody and Ada Ince, 1934. (LMPC via Getty Images)
“Cody and Kahn were evidently overenthusiastic as fight promoters,” read one clip from the the Van Nuys News and Valley Green Sheet, adding that “riding academy operators bought concessions only to find they were unable to get a city permit to operate because of the fact that Rancho de Bill Cody is still in a residential zone with little likelihood of it being placed in any other kind of a zone for a long, long time.”
Less than two months after his arrest, an unperturbed Cody was back on the road promoting “Dugan of the Badlands” in June of 1931, the first in his multi-picture contract with Monogram Pictures.
In 1932, the Olympic Games did come to Los Angeles, but the events that Cody claimed would occur at his Rancho actually happened at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades and Sunset Fields Golf Club in Baldwin Hills.
FILE: Crowds watching an equestrian event at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during the 1932 Summer Olympic Games. (FPG/Getty Images)
Fifteen years later, the old de la Osa adobe had become a real estate office selling new subdivisions carved from old farmland to post-war American dreamers finding their little corner of suburbia in the rapidly growing San Fernando Valley.
When the building itself was threatened with demolition in 1949, the community stepped in and convinced the state to purchase the property, which is today known as Los Encinos State Historic Park. In 2023, a historic memorandum of understanding was signed between the state and the Fernandeño Tataviam Tribe, which formalizes cooperation and collaboration in protecting and preserving the natural and cultural resources of their ancestral lands.
Today, Bill Cody’s brief, scammy time as overseer of the Place of the Oaks is all but forgotten, despite the ongoing historic sanctity of the place. He does not readily appear on the site’s plaques, and has been relegated to B-movie actor status by Old Hollywood fans.
But as it turns out, he may have been somewhat prescient for his failed (or fraudulent) plan to bring the Olympics to Encino. Several events of the 2028 Olympic Games are set to take place at the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, which would have been a part of the original Rancho Los Encinos, including skateboarding and modern pentathlon, which involves fencing, swimming, laser shooting and running. Sadly, horseback riding, a Cody favorite, has been replaced by an “American Ninja Warrior”-style obstacle course.
Josh Heller is a freelance reporter from North Hollywood. He writes about food at LAist, hosts two radio shows on KCSN’s Bilingual Sounds, and publishes a weekly substack about the San Fernando Valley called In The Valley With Josh Heller.
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This article originally published at B-list Hollywood star Bill Cody tried to scam his way into LA’s 1932 Olympics.