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| Painting of El Toro depot by Edgar Gerry Starr (Saddleback Area Historical Soc.) |
How El Toro got its name (which means “the bull” in Spanish,) has been the subject of many conflicting explanations. An attempt to find the truth is in order.
But first, a bit of background…
El Toro is on part of the old Rancho Cañada de Los Alisos, granted to Jose Serrano in 1842 with additional acreage added in 1846. Dwight Whiting acquired most of this property for his Whiting Ranch in the late 1880s. Judge Richard Egan of San Juan Capistrano applied the already longstanding “El Toro” name to the Santa Fe station here in 1887. Although the town itself was initially called Aliso City, the El Toro name was already ingrained in the hearts of locals. The town would be known as El Toro, and soon there was also an El Toro Post Office (1888), followed by an El Toro School District.
El Toro kept its name for over a century and developed from a small rural crossroads into a sprawling suburban landscape. In the mid-to-late 20th century, it grew so fast that newcomers (with no sense of place or local history) greatly outnumbered established local families. So when the community incorporated as a city in 1991 the residents voted to change the town’s name to Lake Forest, which was lifted from a 1960s housing tract.
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| The Serrano-Whiting adobe. Now part of Heritage Hill Historical Park. |
FIRST STORY: Clara Mason Fox’s A History of El Toro (1937) discusses Don Jose Serrano building a new adobe home (which still stands in Heritage Hill Park) on his rancho:
“The Serrano [family’s] explanation of the name El Toro, applied to the ranch, and later to the town, is that the herds of cattle moved to the neighborhood of the new home were dissatisfied, and the bellowing of the bulls heading the herds caused the Indian helpers to call the ranch El Toro.”
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| A California vaquero roping cattle. |
“The story most people believe today goes this way: …one of…Jose Serrano’s prize bulls fell into a deep dry hole where and effort to find underground water had failed,” writes Osterman. “The bull was not found until it was dead, and buzzards were circling overhead. So, they say, the town was named in honor of that bull.”
Later generations of Serranos identified the unfortunate animal as a white-faced prized bull owned by Jose’s son, Francisco.
As in the old game of “telephone,” it seems this story has changed over time. One local recounted a happier mutation of the tale in which the rancho’s vaqueros (cowboys) couldn’t free a bull stuck in a waterhole during heavy rains. But somehow, after several days, the bull was able to struggle free all by himself.
THIRD VERSION: The story Osterman preferred personally was more straightforward:
“This place on the Serrano rancho was called ‘el lugar de los toros.’ This means ‘the place of the bulls.’ Don Jose and his vaqueros …used this place as a pasture for the bulls. This ‘place of the bulls’ was located in the area of El Toro Road and the railroad tracks.”
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| The “Place of the Bulls” appears on a 1936 map of local historical sites, created by the WPA. |
“A farmer was trying to drive a bull out of his cornfield. The bull knocked the farmer’s horse down and killed the animal with his horns. The bull chased the farmer around his dead horse and the man could not get away. A second man passed by [on horseback] and tried to drive the bull away. Even two men could not get the bull to leave. The man on horseback then rode to Santa Ana for help. …When help finally returned, the bull still had the farmer cornered. The bull had to be killed with a shotgun.”
FIFTH VERSION: A classic bit of Orange County folklore holds that a mission padre was charged by a large bull while walking down the El Camino Real between San Juan Capistrano and San Gabriel. In the first volume of the Orange County Historical Society’s Orange County History Series (1931), historian/newspaperman Terry E. Stephenson wrote,…
“There is an old, old story that a devout padre, by the holding up of his hands and a prayer to God, stayed the charge of a mad bull, and the place was called El Toro.”
This tale is also referenced by Osterman and in a 1929 pictorial historical map of Orange County created by artist Jean Goodwin.
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| Detail of map by Jean Goodwin (later Jean Goodwin Ames), published by Fine Arts Press for the local AAUW chapter. |
Although it doesn’t make much of a story to tell around the campfire, historian Jim Sleeper pointed out that the name appears as “Agua del Toro” in rancho applications to the Mexican government as early as 1837. In documents from 1841, it appears again as “Cienega del Toro.” Sleeper puzzled out that these names indicated the headwaters of Serrano Creek. (Thanks to Phil Brigandi for pointing me to Sleeper’s 1969 article, “The Many Mansions of Jose Sepulveda,” in Pacific Coast Archeological Society Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3.)
The 1837 date pushes the name back into the mission era and debunks all the stories involving the rancho (granted in 1842), the Serrano Adobe (built in 1863), farmers (who wouldn’t have been on the scene until the late 1880s at the earliest), or the seeking of aid in Santa Ana (founded in 1869).
In fact, the only one of these stories that isn’t shot down by known historical facts is the one about the padre stopping a charging bull with prayer. But we have no solid source for the story and it does have the ring of a parable fabricated to make a point about the power of prayer.
In short, we may never know exactly how El Toro became El Toro, but we know that it stayed that way for at least 154 years.
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| The village of El Toro, 1970. Railroad tracks in foreground. |
Residents of the Lake Forest planned communities thought their name sounded more chic. Some also did not want to be associated with the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro – what with all its unfortunate connotations of defending our country and our freedom. Others felt, in the words of one resident, that the name El Toro sounded “less than up and coming."
To be fair, the name of the Lake Forest housing tract had a story behind it as well: It was named for a manmade forest and some manmade lakes.
The forest?
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, "experts" touted the quick-growing eucalyptus tree as a solution to California's need for lumber and a source for medicinal oils. Dwight Whiting took the bait and planted over 90 varieties of eucalyptus on 400 acres. But the wood warped, split when you put nails in it, and stank when you burned it. The "medicinal" oils were also disappointing. Whiting tore out some of the trees to plant other crops, but many still stand today.
And as for the lake,…
The lake in Lake Forest refers to the man-made lakes built by developer Occidental Petroleum in the late 1960s. The first was originally called Lake I, and is actually two lakes, now sometimes called Hidden Lakes. The other has the romantic and inspiring name of Lake II. (Early promotional materials claim a depth of twelve feet.)
The closest thing to a natural lake in the area—a glorified mud puddle near El Toro Road at Muirlands—was turned into a grocery store parking lot long ago.
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| Sign at the entrance to the Lake Forest housing tract. |
"It's like losing a right arm … It's either you take it like a man or cry like a baby " said Ray Prothero a member of a local pioneer family during an interview with Los Angeles Times reporter Davan Maharaj. His voice breaking Prothero said, "They shouldn't change the name of the library and the other institutions. It will be like erasing history."
When informed of the name change by Maharaj, then-90-year-old Reyes Serrano – a retired cowboy and the great grandson of Don Jose -- said, "It makes me want to take my gun and go up there and make them change it right back to El Toro." His wife, Dona, had a similar reaction: "You mean they actually did that?" she asked with a pained expression. "It's these damn city people that come to our country and make a city and change the name. Dammit!"
10 comments:
Thanks for the article Chris. We first drove through El Toro in the early 1970's and watched how it changed through the years. We moved there in 1988 and went through the name change. Though we left Lake Forest and CA in 2009 I still enjoy your blog. On a side note I was the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve docent that led your visit to the Hanging Tree and Loma Hills crash site in 2008.
It should be El Toro and never changed. Lake Forest just sounds stupid, no respect for history.
Everyone I know who lives in the El Toro area, still refer to it as El Toro. You can't change history. Sad for the young people of today who may never learn the history of their city/county just because their parents want to believe they live in an "exclusive" area due to it's name. They are only fooling themselves.
My mother lived in El Toro in the early/mid 1950s. She attended Tustin High and remembered a long but trip around the base to get to HS. Great photo of the 8-sided hall where she had her wedding reception. Looks like beautiful countryside yet close enough to the city.
Or, as I've always referred to it: Fake Forest.
I went to high school in the late 60's in Newport Beach. As a clueless teenager I felt privileged even though my family had no real wealth or prestige. Class awareness was an undercurrent present. I now believe the El Toro name change was essentially based on racism, shame, and fantasy. New white immigrants did not want to be associated with a Hispanic heritage and a name more 'vulgar' than something artificially romantic like Laguna Niguel or Mission Viejo. Lake Forest made the connection with the white upscale community north of Chicago where the name fits. Lake Forest is a nonsensical name fabrication. I hope someday the citizens of the fair city will elect to revert to it's rich history for it's name.
Seems "I remember an exit off the I-5 called La Canada and no one else does?" True or False memory 1970's
Yup. La Cañada Road, later Lake Forest Drive.
Scott "Thank you" I just knew it, as I remember I laughingly would pronounced it La "Canada" (country) as I just returned to California after ten years living in the east and I also remember looking at new housing tract in El Toro (1973) but it was still like the wilderness and too far to drive to L.A. so I bought home in city of Orange...
Pamela Hallen-Gibson asked me to find this excerpt from Don Meadows’ _Historic Place Names of Orange County_ (1966), so I may as well share it here also:
“EL TORO (Sp. The Bull) …During Mexican days there were two or three adobe houses located on Aliso Creek where the San Diego Creek crosses it today. A friendly bull, perhaps the first Ferdinand, frequented the neighborhood and became so famous that the cluster of houses became known as Rancho El Toro, or the Ranch of the Bull. When the Santa Fe Railroad extended its line from Santa Ana to San Diego in 1888 the rails were laid a mile north of the present freeway, and where they crossed Aliso Creek a station was erected and named El Toro. The houses farther down the street became Old El Toro, or El Toro Viejo. With the coming of the railroad a boomtown called Aliso City was projected on Aliso Creek, but when application was made for a post office it was refused since the name was too much like Alviso, another office in California. The name El Toro was substituted and the office was opened on May 29, 1888. The school district of El Toro was established in 1889.”
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