The historic Knapp Ranch (1962 to 1995) was located at the upper end of the Castaic Creek drainage in a broad alluvial valley at the head of Cienaga Canyon, south of Liebre Mountain and west of Bear Canyon in the north-west corner of the Angeles National Forest.
The ranch was first settled as a 160-acre land patent in the late 1890s with ownership transferred to Henry E. Woest in 1904 through the provisions of the 1862 Homestead Act.
After nearly a century of private ownership by Woest, Kelly, and Knapp, the property was acquired by the Angeles National Forest in 1995.
Ethnohistory
Many native American artifacts have been found on the ranch property and nearby areas. Chester King, an archaeologist specializing in the study of the prehistory of California, places the archeological sites CA-LAN-433 and CA-LAN-434 below Knapp Ranch as being the remains of moomga, cacuycuyjabit, ajuavit, and/or juyubit/huyung. These identifications are postulated from the names of settlements in San Fernando Mission records. These settlements were systematically depopulated by Spanish missionaries between 1802 and 1805 as the traditional inhabitants were relocated to Spanish missions.
Cienaga Ranch
Heinrich (Henry) Edward Woest was born on 9 April 1872 in Manhattan, New York City. In early adulthood, Henry accompanied his mother to California after her husband, Heinrich Woest, died in 1875. As a young adult, Henry Woest acquired the land holding under the 1862 Homestead Act with private ownership transferred to him on 30 August 1904. The property was defined as the northeast quarter (160 acres) of Section 22 of Township 7 North, Range 17 West, San Bernardino Meridian.
Henry was a commercial bee keeper who, in the early 1900s, was managing 130 colonies of bees which produced tons of honey every year Henry used three donkeys to haul lumber to the property to build a ranch house that is still standing but now in ruins.
The property was originally called the Cienaga Ranch named after Cienaga Canyon in which the ranch was located. The name, Cienaga Canyon, appeared on USGS maps as early as 1903 at the time of the granting of the land patent.
Henry was the half-brother of Annie Rose Briggs whom she called "Eddie". They partnered in efforts to locate lost 19th-century gold mines believed to be in the immediate area of the Cienaga Ranch.
Kelly Ranch
A man named Kelly bought the Cienaga Ranch in the mid-1920s and it was subsequently known as the Kelly Ranch for several decades. Very little is known about the ranch or the people involved during the Kelly era of ownership.
The name "Kelly Ranch" first appeared on a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) map that was surveyed in 1930. A 1931 USGS map shows an "Emergency Airplane Landing Field" located on the Kelly Ranch however this feature was not included on later maps.
A regular visitor to the Kelly Ranch as a teenager, David Wasdahl, remembers that a family named Pearce or Pierce were managing or caretaking the ranch in the late 1930s. Tom Benz (Benco Mine) said: "The care takers of the Kelly Ranch was Coronal Shaffer and his sister. My dad knew him from church and he gave us his pet goat which we had in Plum Canyon."
The family sold the property in 1962 after Kelly died.
Jon Meyer, a regular visitor to the Knapp ranch in the 1960s, recalls: "When I asked Frank Knapp how he found the Kelly Ranch...he said he did some stone and rock work for the family back in the day.....and acquired it from 'Grandma Kelly'.....no one in the Kelly family wanted to keep it."
Knapp Ranch
In 1962, Frank John Knapp, Jr. (1900 - 1990) and his brother, Alfonso Alfred Knapp (1902 - 1968), bought the ranch property as equal partners from the Kelly family. According to the part-time foreman at Knapp Ranch, Ronald T. Abramchuk (nickname "Black Bart"), the brothers planned to turn the ranch into a hunting lodge. When Alfonso died unexpectedly a few years later in 1968, Frank bought his partner's half share for $40,000 and became the sole owner of the Knapp Ranch.
Immigration
Their father, Franz ("Frank") John Knapp Sr. was born on 21 November 1875 in Tyrol, Austria
The Knapp family immigrated from Austria to the US in waves. Franz Knapp first came to the US from Austria with his family in June 1903. They sailed on the "SS Finland" from Antwerp on 6 June 1903 and arrived in the port of New York on 16 June 1903. The "SS Finland" was an American-flagged, ocean liner built in 1902 for the Red Star Line.