Arson Team Investigates Rosan Ranch Fires

Orange County Fire Department arson investigators Saturday tried to pinpoint the cause of fires that damaged three abandoned structures on the old Rosan Ranch in San Juan Capistrano.

No one was injured in the fires. Two began began early Friday morning. A third fire 19 hours later damaged another building on the 30-acre hilltop property that overlooks Interstate 5 south of Ortega Highway.

A Fire Department spokeswoman said all three structures were between 30% and 40% destroyed.

Investigators estimated the damage at $175,000.

The property, which was owned by industrialist Jose Rosan, has been vacant for years. The parcel has been approved for commercial development, and the structures, according to San Juan Capistrano officials, have been approved for demolition.

Pamela Hallan-Gibson, considered a leading historian in Orange County, said one of the structures on the property was once the home of former Judge John Landel, the first justice of the peace of San Juan Township. Landel also was a deputy sheriff in what was then called the Anaheim District before Orange County was formed. Townships and the positions of justices of the peace were abolished in California in the early 1950s.

Landel later was a deputy in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Hallan-Gibson said the main house on the Rosan Ranch was built in the mid-1930s by William Martin, who had married a member of the Dominguez family, whose wealth came from oil.

When Rosan bought the property after World War II, he enlarged the house that had been Landel’s and turned it into a conference building in which he held meetings with guests and officials from his company.