Hawkins-Nimocks Estate-Patricio Ontiveros Adobe

Two layers of Southern California history sit on this Santa Fe Springs property. The earlier is the Patricio Ontiveros Adobe, a three-room structure about 30 meters long whose cobble and boulder foundations survive. Probably occupied by the Ontiveros family between 1811 and 1814, it was linked to Mission San Juan Capistrano and abandoned after the family left in 1834-1835. Excavations recovered large amounts of cattle bone, Tizon Brown pottery, Majolica and Chinese ceramics, giving evidence of butchering, trade and diet. The later layer is the Hawkins-Nimocks Estate, a garden ranch begun in the 1880s on land once owned by J.E. Fulton, founder of Fulton Wells. It retains concrete fountains, urns and planters, a trellis, a tank house and aged carob trees whose cuttings helped start the commercial carob industry. Together they show settlement from the Mission era to the early twentieth century.