Of Scorpions, Ghosts, and Parking Lots

By C.C. de Vere

Collage of Espiritu Chijulla Menendez Leonis by Madi Parsley

“Are you here for the museum or the saloon?” the parking attendant asked me.

“Uh, sorry?” I was still shaking pretty badly. Five minutes earlier, I was on the westbound 101, signaling to merge into the exit lane, when a massive Cadillac Escalade zoomed in like a bat out of hell and cut me off, coming mere inches from my comparatively little Toyota.

The attendant explained that the lot was shared by the Leonis Adobe Museum and the cantina next door. It was just after 10 a.m., and I was there for the house, not a margarita-fueled brunch. 

The Leonis Adobe is one of the rarest of rare places in Los Angeles County: a surviving relic of our Old West past.

The museum’s entrance is routed through the Plummer House, a Victorian cottage relocated from Plummer Park in West Hollywood, and now the visitor center for the Leonis Adobe. You will see framed pictures of the house, Miguel Leonis, his wife Espiritu, and their daughter Marcelina. You will see replicas of Don Miguel’s pistols. What you won’t see is the brutal, years-long struggle Espiritu went through to keep a house that was rightfully hers.

The house is a long and generously sized adobe with a wide wooden porch, probably built in the 1840s. In the nineteenth century, the surrounding land was Rancho El Escorpión - Scorpion Ranch. Today, the house is surrounded by Calabasas - Spanish for “pumpkins” or “squashes”. 

Locals have long lionized Miguel Leonis - the now-closed continuation high school in Woodland Hills was named for him. An immigrant from France’s Basque Country, he became the third-richest man in California before his death in 1889. 

Fantastical claims abound: that Don Miguel was illiterate and only spoke Basque, that he was so strong he threw a stolen safe into the river, or that he was a drunk. Most of the stories should be taken with an entire canister of salt. Court records reveal a glimpse of the real Don Miguel.

Miguel arrived in Los Angeles, became the foreman of Rancho El Escorpión, and bought out his boss’ half of the ranch. The other half belonged to Espiritu Chijulla Menendez, a Spanish-speaking, half-Chumash and half-Kizh widow with a young son. The land had belonged to her father Oden, chief of the Chumash village Humaliwo (Malibu).

Pictures of Miguel and Espiritu hang in the parlor. Mannequins resembling Miguel and Espiritu stand in the kitchen.

Some visitors report seeing Miguel’s ghost. I wonder how many of them just got spooked by the mannequins.

Two-story adobes are very rare - Miguel added the second story in the 1870s and enclosed a veranda to accommodate a sturdy wooden staircase. Coming upstairs, I felt like I was being watched. But not by Miguel. It felt like an exhausted, elderly woman who did not trust me in her house.

A highly decorated trunk in Espiritu’s bedroom is the only original stick of furniture. Espiritu’s red velvet canopy bed was re-created from contemporary accounts.

I couldn’t stay in Espiritu’s bedroom for long. The feeling of being watched was too intense, and it continued until I stepped out onto the upstairs veranda. 

Miguel and Espiritu’s only child together, Marcelina, died of smallpox at age twenty. Miguel eventually recruited his nephew Jean-Baptiste to come to the rancho and eventually take it over. Six weeks later, Miguel was dead - mortally wounded in a wagon accident in the Cahuenga Pass.

In his will, Miguel claimed that Espiritu was his housekeeper, not his wife. He left her a pittance, left Rancho El Escorpion and his fortune to his siblings in France, and stated that she would get nothing if she contested the will.

Espíritu hired a good attorney and contested the will anyway, demanding half of their estate as his widow. 

The court battle raged for weeks. Dozens of witnesses were called upon to testify as to whether Miguel and Espiritu were married or not. Marcelina’s headstone was even entered into evidence. The Los Angeles Times gleefully raked all the muck it could, and published a tabloid-worthy story claiming Espiritu (now in her fifties) had married an 18-year-old man.

Espiritu was awarded half the estate. But it wasn’t over.

Early LA had no shortage of con artists with no qualms whatsoever about trying to cheat a two-time widow out of her house. Espiritu was in court, off and on, for SIXTEEN YEARS. 

Nine months after the last court battle ended, Espiritu passed away, leaving the house to her son from her first marriage.

The house had been abandoned and left to rot when Miguel began fixing it up. It was abandoned and left to rot again, in the 1950s. 

The house was nearly torn down in 1962 for a grocery store parking lot. Instead, it became Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1. 

An old house, abandoned twice, owned and nearly lost multiple times by a woman living in a stacked deck, and nearly bulldozed for a parking lot - the adobe is a truly remarkable survivor, still standing between the 101 and Calabasas Road, surrounded by kitschy faux-Western and faux-Spanish storefronts. 

We call it the Leonis Adobe. But I, personally, consider it Espiritu’s house.

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C.C. de Vere is from Sherman Oaks. She blogs about dead French people in Los Angeles and is eight years into compiling a map of historic French LA. She likes to build scale models of lost Los Angeles landmarks and is proud to have one displayed at the Valley Relics Museum and another at the Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library.