Battle Reenactment
October 12th and 13th (civilian camp opens at 10am and the Victorian tea and dance is Saturday at 3:30pm)
Two-day weekend 1840s California based living history event featuring
a reenactment of the Battle of Dominguez Hill—also known as the Battle
of the Old Woman’s Gun.
- Battle re-creations from the Mexican American War
- 150th anniversary of California’s involvement in the Civil War
- Meet people from the 1800s such as the Dominguez sisters, Thaddeus and Leontine Lowe with the U.S. Balloon Corps, musicians, soldiers, seamstresses, crafts people, cooks, chaplain, doctor, mountain men and more
- Hospital and surgical demonstrations with Dr. Malarky
- Whirled Peas Band performance both days (Sat: 1:30pm and Sun: 12:45pm)
- Adobe brick making, gold panning, sewing, lace making (demonstrations and interactive participation)
- Victorian hairdressing
- Cooking and tortilla making (demonstrations on both)
- Children’s games and pastimes (participate as you learn)
- Californio and U.S. Navy encampment re-creations
- Civil War encampment re-creation
- Time period clothing and items for sale
- Cannon firing
- Victorian tea and dance Saturday, 3:30pm to 6:30pm with hot tea, tea sandwiches, lemonade and desserts. The Whirled Peas will be performing and Ginger Alberti, dance caller
- Actual historic site of the battle
- And more!
If it were not for an elderly woman named Igania Reyes and the
cleverness of Captain Jose Antonio Carrillo, the Mexican-American War
Dominguez Hill Battle would have been lost. Carrillo and his 50 troops
were able to trick 200 U.S. military troops into believing that they
were outnumbered with strategic use of horses, lances, and one cannon.
That one cannon had been hidden by Reyes behind her house just before
U.S. troops seized Los Angeles in 1846. Having the cannon was such a
large part of the victory that the battle was nicknamed “The Battle of
the Old Woman’s Gun” in Reyes’s honor.
Get news updates and let us know you’re coming by visiting our
Facebook event page
See our Flickr photo gallery
Download the event flyer.
Participants: Soldados e Californios, Los Pobladores, The Washington
Artillery, W.E.S.T., Drum Barracks, 1840s U.S. Marines, U.S. Balloon Corps, Braids for Maids, Sew Cranky, Straw Benders, Photos Made Perfect, Kansas Mercantile, Brodieaea’s, and many wonderful individuals participating in the living history civilian camp.
