Chatsworth Calera Site

Lime is what held the mission together, and it was burned at this end of the valley. Limestone went into pit kilns and fired until the rock gave up its carbon dioxide, leaving quicklime for mortar, plaster and whitewash, and the oaks were topped for the fuel. As many as five kilns worked here, run by the people the mission held. The kiln that carries the landmark sits north of this park on closed reservoir land. The bronze here is not the state's: a historical society set it in 1948, twenty-nine years before the listing.

What the plaque says

These venerable oak trees were "topped" by the Franciscan friars to furnish fuel for the nearby lime kilns that provided mortar for the building of the Mission San Fernando Rey de Espana. These fused rocks were taken, for their preservation, from the remains of the ancient kilns in this vicinity. Dedicated in honor of William W. Orcutt, October 2, 1948 Historical Society of Southern California and California Centennials Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Leonis Adobe — 4.1 mi
  Miguel Leonis left his estate to relatives in France and called Espíritu Chijulla his housekeeper; she spent sixteen years proving in court that she was his wife.
• Los Encinos State Historic Park — 9.0 mi
  A spring that never stopped running, the village it fed for thousands of years, and the rancho that took the ground away.
• Mission San Fernando Rey de España — 11 mi
  The seventeenth Alta California mission, founded at the Tataviam village of Achoicominga, with the largest adobe building in the state standing beside it.
• The Cascades — 11 mi
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.

More markers nearby

• Old Trapper's Lodge — 3.9 mi
• Plummer Park and Oldest House in Hollywood — 4.1 mi
• Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village — 5.6 mi
• Los Encinos State Historic Park — 9.0 mi