User:Jengod/Siutcanga-Encino Spring

The Encino Springs are historic artesian springs that were the site of the Siutcanga village of the Tongva-Kizh people, and later provided water for Rancho Los Encinos in what is now the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, U.S.

Juan Crespí mentioned the springs and associated settlements in his 1769 diary. In 1845, Manuel Micheltorena's troops camped at the Encino Springs before the Battle of Providencia. The spring reservoirs were apparently built around 1872 by Eugene Garnier. According to a description from 1875 the main ranch spring "supplied a stone reservoir and a bathing pool and yielded about 5 U.S.gal a minute". An 1890 account described "a number" of springs at Encino "in local use". The springs were carbonated, smelled slightly of hydrogen sulphide, and emerged with a water temperature of about 83 - 90 F As of 1915, there were two recognized springs on the site, about 30 ft apart, the smaller spring west of the larger spring, and enclosed in a small reservoir made of stone. According to a U.S. government geologist, the water was associated with a layer of Miocene shale, "which here dips about 25°N" toward the Valley, and was a "primary and secondary alkaline and primary saline water of moderate mineralization". As of 1969 the springs still yielding 24000 U.S.gal a day, and they were still flowing at Los Encinos State Historic Park as of 1978.

Upon discovery in 1925 of a grinding stone and possible burial ground west of the springs, archeologist John A. Comstock told a newspaper reporter that "Indians in the Encino Hot Springs vicinity fashioned the finest stone vessels of any Indians In this part of the country with the possible exception of Catalina Island Indians who had a stone particularly adaptable to such purposes". There was an Encino Hot Springs resort in the 1920s.