The name San Onofre is familiar to generations of Southern Californians. It brings to mind a long stretch of coastline, surfing, camping and the distinctive domes of the nuclear power plant.
But San Onofre once had something else: a village.
The community took shape around the San Onofre railroad station and the enormous ranching operation that surrounded it. For decades, people lived, worked and raised families in an isolated corner of northern San Diego County that bore little resemblance to the developed coastline people know today.
The history of that vanished community has been documented in the Journal of San Diego History in an article titled “Remembering the Forgotten Village of San Onofre: An Untold Story of Race Relations.” Written by historian Ryan Jordan, the article draws on historical records and recollections from people who lived and worked in the area.
San Onofre’s connection to the railroad dates to 1888, when the Santa Fe railroad built a depot there to help transport cattle, livestock and crops to market.
The railroad was essential to the community.
San Onofre’s location was remote, but the depot connected the ranching area with other Southern California communities. The surrounding Rancho Santa Margarita was a major cattle operation, and annual cattle roundups and rodeos at San Onofre attracted hundreds of cattle buyers from throughout the Southwest.
Residents also remembered the bunkhouses used by cowboys a couple of miles from the train station.
In 1916, San Onofre even briefly became a movie set. Jerome O’Neill allowed a film crew to use the San Onofre corral for an unnamed film with silent screen star Roy Stewart. A photograph showing O’Neill and the crew is described in the journal article as probably the oldest known photograph of the area, Jordan wrote.
The area was also home to Hispanic and Japanese American residents, including agricultural workers and tenant farmers. The 1910 census counted roughly 120 people on the larger Rancho Santa Margarita, including about 90 people with Hispanic last names. By 1920, the area included Japanese laborers as well as Hispanic and Anglo residents.
The community grew more visible in the 1920s and 1930s.
Archibald Blaine Haven arrived in San Onofre in 1925 and leased roughly 1,400 acres around the train stop. By 1930, census takers were identifying the inhabitants as living at Haven’s Ranch or San Onofre, and the population had grown to 135.
Agriculture was an important part of everyday life. Families in the area grew crops including celery, lettuce, cantaloupe, tomatoes, sugar beets and lima beans. Other tenants specialized in flowers, including poinsettias.
San Onofre was still a small and isolated place, but it was a real community, with residents, farms, ranching operations and the railroad connecting it to the outside world.
Then World War II changed everything.
In 1942, the federal government acquired the Rancho Santa Margarita property for what became Camp Pendleton. Some families, including the Havens, were able to maintain individual leases for years, but many tenant farmers eventually moved away. The military takeover also ended Frank Ulrich’s control of the San Onofre beach.
The village survived for a while longer.
By the 1960s, however, the last private agricultural leases had lapsed. Then came the construction of Interstate 5.
The remaining buildings along the old Route 101 were in the path of the freeway and were demolished. According to Jordan’s account, that ended the physical evidence of the old San Onofre village.
The village disappeared, but the name survived.
San Onofre’s later history became associated with surfing, recreation and the nuclear power plant, creating a very different identity from the ranching community that once occupied the area.
Today, little remains to suggest that a small village once stood there. What survives instead are photographs, historical records and the memories preserved in accounts of the people who lived and worked in the area.
For a place that has become synonymous with one of California’s best-known beaches, it is easy to forget that San Onofre was once a small community with its own residents, farms, ranching life and stories.
The 1916 photograph of Jerome O’Neill and the film crew offers perhaps the most intriguing glimpse of that earlier San Onofre — a place that existed long before the freeway, state beach and nuclear plant became its defining landmarks.
Read more history stories here. Do you have a story to tell? Send an email to DebbieSklar@cox.net
Sources:
- San Diego History Center, The Journal of San Diego History, Winter/Spring 2014, Volume 60, Nos. 1 & 2, “Remembering the Forgotten Village of San Onofre: An Untold Story of Race Relations,” by Ryan Jordan.
