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Lodge Has Closed From the City of San Juan Bautista Historical Society: This Carpenter Italianate-style building was originally the San Juan Grammar School before it became the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Lodge. The San Juan School was built in 1868 near First Street in the northwest corner of town. In 1907 the building was sold to the IOOF Lodge and moved to its current location. The IOOF is the second fraternal organization in San Juan Bautista, following the Texas Lodge, and was ...

The lodge was founded in 1891 by some real frontiersman. At that time, San Fernando was a dusty little settlement in what was known locally as the San Fernando Desert or the San Fernando Plain and which later became the San Fernando Valley. Because the climate was so arid, agriculture consisted primarily of dryland grain farming. Over the coming decades, the San Fernando Valley would evolve briefly into an agricultural region as Los Angeles began to import water from the High Sierras, but in the ...