Fallbrook Historical Society

07/28/2020

History of Fallbrook Regional Health District

History Of Fallbrook Regional Health District.

By Tom Frew

The founding of the first hospital in Fallbrook was set into motion by the actions of a Fallbrook nurse, Louise Shipley, and a rich Englishwoman, Alice Appleford. Here is their story gleaned from back issues of The Fallbrook Enterprise, census data, and Fallbrook Historical Society archives.

Click below for Full History at -
https://www.fallbrookhistoricalsociety.org/about/fallbrook-history/featured-articles/history-of-fallbrook-regional-health-district/

The founding of the first hospital in Fallbrook was set into motion by the actions of a Fallbrook nurse, Louise Shipley, and a rich Englishwoman, Alice Appleford. Here is their story gleaned …

07/17/2020

Fallbrook History bits:
Do you know It was 100 years ago in
1920
1. New land companies formed, new neighborhoods developed, real estate business propered.
2. Live Oak Park dedicated as a County Park.
3. First white line painted on Main Street.
4. First sidewalks built on Main Street. Most were higher than building floor levels, so rainwater flowed into stores and offices.
5. Acreage devoted to avocados increases.
6. Road between Oceanside and Fallbrook paved.

06/24/2020

Opening News! July 12, 2020

The Heritage Center museums will be re-opening Sundays beginning July 12. Visitors are required to wear face coverings.

We want to have soft opening. Please wear face mask and keep distance.

Stay safe and enjoy our museums.

See you there!

View our re-opening plan athttps://www.fallbrookhistoricalsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/FHS_COVID_2020-06-16.pdf

05/22/2020

Some Fallbrook history on Memorial Day 2020

By Tom Frew

The Fallbrook Veterans of Foreign Wars post, VFW 1924 on Old Stage Road, is named for the first son of Fallbrook to be killed in World War Two. Seaman 1st Class Charles E. Swisher was killed in the early moments of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Swisher family, Charles parents Leon and Mary and his younger sister Mildred, were well known around Fallbrook because of their involvement with civic activities. Young Charles had attended West Fallbrook Union Elementary School as a child. He went on to play football on the Fallbrook Union High School team in 1939. After the football season, he joins the Future Farmers student organization. Charles enlists in the U.S. Navy in November 1940 just 2 weeks after turning 18 years old. Following his basic training in San Diego, he is assigned to the battleship USS Arizona then docked in Bremerton, Washington. Just a year later he is promoted to Seaman 1st Class while the Arizona is docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On Saturday night, December 6th, Charles attends a concert on the navy base with some Fallbrook friends also stationed there. He then returns to the ship to stand watch from midnight to 4 a.m. Seaman 1st Class Swisher is sleeping in Sunday morning in the bow area of the ship when Japanese planes make a surprise attack on Hawaii at 7:55 am December 7, 1941. The Arizona is hit several times; explodes, burns and sinks taking the lives of 1,177 sailors and Marines.

Full story at https://www.fallbrookhistoricalsociety.org/about/fallbrook-history/featured-articles/naming-of-fallbrook-vfw-post/

05/06/2020

Post from Ricardo Quintana Ricardo Quintana Favela - Sharing for FHS

Fallbrook's own 5 de Mayo.

Today is May 5th and the birthday of one of Fallbrook and California's most historically significant figures. His family's last name can be found in many Southern California cities on streets, parks, schools, campgrounds & more, including Fallbrook's Pico Avenue named after his nephew. Pio Pico, born on May, 5th, 1801, was the last Mexican governor of California, an Afro-Mexican who in his lifetime was a citizen of New Spain, Mexico, and the US, and whose family was intricately involved in the founding of each of these colonial states in these lands.

As an Afro-Mexican he took the more progressive political stances within that time and along with his brother Andres, led the fight against the US invasion of Mexico and California. Knowing that slavery was legal in the US in the 1840s, he fought for California to remain with Mexico, which had already abolished slavery. After California was occupied and forced into the US, he later advocated for the abolishment of slavery by endorsing Abraham Lincoln for president. The effort of Mexicans in California to support the Union during the Civil War is what led to the popularization of 5 de Mayo in the US today. Californios (Mexican Californians) celebrated and politicized the victory by Mexican forces in Puebla, Mexico as a symbol against French imperialism. France was known to be sympathetic to the Confederacy. Through 5 de Mayo celebrations they raised funds for the Union cause, which they saw as another front against France and oppression.

Despite Pico's progressive positions, he still operated as a colonizer especially regarding relations and land issues with Native people. Conflicts regarding land seizures, including the pueblo of Las Flores on the Camp Pendleton coast and Temecula, contributed to long standing tensions and conflicts between Native and Mexican people in this area.

He stands as a reminder of the historic presence of Mexican people in California and as a founder of the state.

Attached is a painting that was commissioned in 1876 about an event that took place in the 1840s on Pico's ranch. This could have taken place anywhere between Camp Pendleton, Fallbrook or De Luz. The painting itself might be the first image of life in the Fallbrook area, when it was part of Mexico.

03/31/2020

The Fallbrook Historical Society is curating, and collecting information about Fallbrook's heroes in past wars. On Vietnam Veteran's Day we remember, Private First Class Dennis Kipp USMC killed in action near Da Nang on October 20, 1969. He was just 18 years old. Dennis attended Fallbrook High School in the 1960s as Dennis Shoudy (his mother's married name).
The only phograph we found for him was his sophomore picture in the 1968 Fallbrook High School yearbook.

If you have photos or letters and you want to share with Fallbrook Historical Society, Please contact us or Tom Frew, Historian at FHS.

Please visit our website during social distancing as our museums are closed until further notice.

https://www.fallbrookhistoricalsociety.org

Stay safe and positive.

03/19/2020

Great read while social distancing...

Fallbrook History By Tom Frew.

—— Rancho Monserate —-
Alvarado Street running across the center of our town is named in honor of the Alvarado family, the first non-native family to reside on the land that later became Fallbrook. Since 1846 the Alvarado family owned 13,322 acres of the Rancho Monserate. Thousands of cattle and sheep herded by Mexican and Indian vaqueros once grazed across the unfenced Rancho Monserate.

Modern day spelling differs slightly from the old records. The Rancho was named for an ancient monastery in Monserrate, Spain near Barcelona. The Alvarado’s Monserate cattle brand, shown here, is one of the classic Californio “picture” brands whose meanings have since been lost.
Bordered on the south by the San Luis Rey River and on the north by approximately where Stagecoach Lane and Reche Road are today, the Rancho Monserate stretched east/west between the old ‘Road from Temecula’ (now I-15) to roughly where Mission Road is today. See 1872 Plat of Rancho Monserate below.
Luiseno Indian families were living here when California governor Pio Pico granted the land to California born Ysidro Maria Alvarado in 1846 as a reward for his father’s long military service.

Ysidro Alvarado's father arrived in San Diego as a Spanish soldier in 1769 with the earliest expedition. Retiring after 35 years of service, his family lived in Los Angeles. Ysidro Alvarado and Micaela Avila were married in the church at San Gabriel Mission, initially raising their children in Los Angeles where Micaela’s father was an important official.

To the marriage of Ysidro and Micaela Alvarado three children are born: Tomas (1839), Dolores (1840) and Lugardo (1842). In 1845, Micaela Avila de Alvarado died of unknown causes. Soon after her death, Ysidro married Micaela's younger sister Manuela. The family moved to the Monserate where Ysidro Alvarado built a large adobe home on the rancho near the NE intersection today’s I-15 and SR76.
In 1862, an outbreak of smallpox swept northern San Diego County killing hundreds. The epidemic ravages Rancho Monserate. Don Ysidro and his wife nursed many of their dying servants, vaqueros, and farm hands. Ysidro and Manuela eventually contract the disease themselves and also die. It has been said that many of the victims of the smallpox epidemic were buried in a common grave near the Alvarado Hacienda.
Ysidro had expressed his wish that he wanted to be buried at the San Luis Rey Mission. Although the mission was now in private ownership with Alvarado’s neighbor, Colonel Cave Couts of Rancho Guajome, it was still La Mission to the faithful. Col. Couts did not want smallpox victims buried there. Couts’ men confronted and shot dead one of Ysidro’s mourners during the burial.

Ysidro Alvarado’s 3 adult children could not immediately inherit the Rancho. The boundaries and title were still being determined by the U.S. Land Commission, according to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo that ended the Mexican American War and conceded the state of California to the United States. This 9 year delay also affected a Canadian settler from New York named Vital Reche, who could not gain title to his nearby Live Oak Canyon homestead until after the Rancho boundaries are confirmed.
The final survey is finally approved in 1872 and Rancho Monserate is equally divided, with approximately 4,400 acres to each of the heirs.
Tomas Alvarado, the son, receives the eastern portion which includes today’s Pala Mesa. Under Tomas’ management, cattle and sheep become more numerous and the Rancho is profitable. Tomas’ sister Dolores Alvarado de Serrano and her husband inherit the middle portion where Gird Road now runs. Their younger sister Lugarda Alvarado Palomares and her husband receive ownership of the western portion, where Fallbrook High School is now.
Eventually the presence of so many homesteaders on or around the unfenced rancho make large scale stock raising impractical. Over the years Rancho Monserate is subdivided and sold off into many smaller parcels of ranches or farms.

Acknowledgements:
1) Don Rivers, Fallbrook Historical Society, In Village News Oct. 29, 1998
2) Elizabeth Yamaguchi, Fallbrook Historical Society, 1998
3) James S. Copley, Historic Ranchos of San Diego, 1969

03/10/2020

*****Free Admission *****
———————————
////// For High School students with Student ID.//////

Fund raising Event for Fallbrook Historical Society. We need you! Please share on your Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn page and Tag your friends.

Please save the Date 3/28 for amazing award winning film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, produced by Fallbrook native Frank Capra.

The Historical Mission Theater
231 N. Main Ave,
Fallbrook. CA 92028

There will be two showing:
First show: 1 pm social hour. Film start 2 pm

Second Show: 5 pm social hour. Film start at 6 pm.

Please buy tickets at https://m.bpt.me/event/4506494

Ticket Price
Online: $10
At the door : $12

https://fallbrookmissiontheater.com

03/04/2020

Fund raising Event for Fallbrook Historical Society. We need you! Please share on your Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn page and Tag your friends.

Please save the Date 3/28 for amazing award winning film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, produced by Fallbrook native Frank Capra.

The Historical Mission Theater
231 N. Main Ave,
Fallbrook. CA 92028

There will be two showing:
First show: 1 pm social hour. Film start 2 pm

Second Show: 5 pm social hour. Film start at 6 pm.

Please buy tickets at https://m.bpt.me/event/4506494

Ticket Price
Online: $10
At the door : $12

https://fallbrookmissiontheater.com

01/19/2020

Map showing Fallbrook Train Station in California Southern Railroad route.
From San Diego to Barstow.

Learn more about Fallbrook by visiting Fallbrook Historical Society Museum today.

Open Sunday and Thursday from 1pm to 4 pm.

Please also visit FHS page for interesting stories about Fallbrook.
When you are there please click on the like button.

12/22/2019

Origin of the Name of De Luz

By: Tom Frew - Historian FHS.

Long before American settlers came to this area, there was a small adobe house, about 12 square feet, on the point of a hill near a stream. Cattle from the adjoining Rancho used to range over this area because Pio Pico and later Don Juan Forster, believed that the valley between the Santa Margarita and the Santa Rosa Mountains were part of Rancho Santa Margarita. Vaqueros said a Spaniard or Californian by the name of Jose de Luz had built a corral and kept stock in there at one time. An American settler, A.J. Foss, said there were still a few stubs of posts of a corral visible around the adobe in 1877. This place was known as Corral de Jose de Luz.
The earliest known documentation of the name De Luz locally was on a map dated 1878 of Rancho Santa Margarita (today’s Camp Pendleton) that designated this stream as the Arroyo Corral de la Luz.
Downstream, where the arroyo emptied into the Santa Margarita River, the California Southern railroad built a station in 1882, shortening the name to De Luz. A post office was contained in the station. Following the establishment of the De Luz Post office here, settler homestead records of the 1880s were signed and dated as being in De Luz.
For many years an unsubstantiated story has persisted that De Luz was named after an Englishman named Luce who kept a string of horses in a corral at Judson’s hotel near the hot springs in the canyon, as reported in the 1983 History of San Bernardino and San Diego Counties This report cannot be true. The first problem is Luce is not De Luz. Most importantly, this place was known by Californios as the Corral de Jose de Luz and documented by Americans as De Luz many years before Mr. Luce visited the hotel that Mr. Lemon Judson built in the 1880s.

Albert J. Foss, was the son of a pre-1870 settler in San Luis Rey. Albert Foss’ family grew up as neighbors to Jose Antonio Pico and his family. Jose Antonio was a brother to the former California governor and the original owner of Rancho Santa Margarita Pio Pico . A.J. married Harriet Neff of West Fallbrook. The Neff who kept sheep and camped at the old adobe in the 1870s was Millard Neff, A.J’s brother in law. Also, Orlando Stewart, the American who first homesteaded this spot and planted a vineyard here, had married A.J’s older sister Florence, so he was another brother in law. A.J. Foss had family in this place, he knew the people, and he spoke with Forster’s vaqueros. We ought to trust his report.
A Californio named Jose de la Luz. The name Jose de la Luz was not uncommon. We looked at several Jose de la Luz’s, but only one fits the time and place. We do not have proof, but a California born Spanish soldier of mixed blood, who traveled around Southern California from Monterey, to San Diego to San Gabriel, uniquely meets the vaqueros’ description of a “Spaniard or Californian” who could have built this corral before 1850. His name was Jose de la Luz Linares. He was born at the Mission San Antonio de Padua, a short distance from Monterey on the El Camino Real on 20 January 1800. When he became of age, Jose de la Luz Linares followed in the footsteps of his father, Salvador Linares, to become a leatherjacket soldier (soledado cuero). Attached is a picture of a leather jacket soldier.
Jose de la Luz Linares married Maria de Jesus Bruno Garcia at the Presidio in San Diego on 19 July 1819 where he was stationed. Soon thereafter, in 1821, Mexico became independent from Spain. Although a soldier of Spain, Jose de la Luz Linares naturally chose to remain in California where he had always lived, and become a Mexican citizen.

We do not know what Jose de la Luz did immediately following his release from military service (about 1829?). Perhaps he tried his hand at ranching in the 1830s along the Santa Margarita River. We do know that in 1840, as part of the secularization movement to distribute Spanish church lands, Governor Juan Alvarado deeded to Jose de la Luz Linares 4,340 acres, presumably as a reward for his military service, and possibly for his support for Mexican Independence. With his new property, Jose de la Luz Linares founded the Rancho Los Nogales, just 70 miles from today’s De Luz. The City of Diamond Bar is located on that site today. Life was hard and short in those days. Jose de la Luz Linares died at Mission San Gabriel in September 1846.