The Lassalle Ranch (alternately LaSalle) in 1963.

According to Maggi Perkins (2010:46), the ranch that Frank Lassalle started established in 1890 "remained a working ranch into the early 1960s." (Today it's a housing development; see map below.)

Describing this image, she writes that the ranch "was famous for its barbecues, with most of the food being prepared in the original beehive oven seen in the center of the photograph. The orginal ranch house can be seen on the left, and the small building on the right was used as a wine cellar."

About Frank Lassalle

Frank Lassalle (alternately Lasalle) was born May 22, 1870, in France, as Francois Lassalle. He emigrated to the United States in 1890 and established a farm in Wiley Canyon about that time. (There was a Lasalle who ran the meat market in the former Campton's General Store in Newhall around 1900, but we don't know if it's the same person.)

The 1910 U.S. Census for Newhall lists him as a self-employed farmer and shows he had two laborers living with him at his ranch: Peter Sibus, 46, of France; and Pedro Gutierrez, 20, of Spain. Sibus came over in 1907, Gutierrez in 1909. All were bachelors, at least in 1910.

But bachelorhood was not to last for Frank Lassalle. By 1920, he had a wife (Nathalie) and five daughters: Marie, 7; Francine, 5; Rosa, 4; Teresa, 2; and Anna L. (aka Lorraine A.), 2 months. By 1930 he had a sixth daughter, Marguerite.

Frank Lassalle died at age 78 on Dec. 2, 1948. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery, 4201 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles., where Nathalie (1879-1959) also rests.

Today his grapes are gone, but Frank Lassalle's name lives on at Rancho La Salle, a gated tract of 25 homes built in 1979 along La Salle Canyon Drive, south of Calgrove Boulevard, on a section of Lassalle's ranch.

Genealogical research by Tricia Lemon Putnam.