Camp Pendleton Land Has Seen an Army of Owners

The area that helped spawn fortunes for some and a training base for others--Camp Pendleton--was first scouted by Europeans when Spanish explorer Don Gaspar de Portola traveled up the coast in 1769 and visited the region on St. Margaret’s Day, for whom he named the area.

The first Christian baptism in Alta California occurred on the site of the rancho, when missionaries with the Portola expedition happened across a sick Indian child and convinced the infant’s parents that baptism was in his best interest.

The land fell within the jurisdiction of the padres at Mission San Luis Rey in 1789. In 1828, brothers Pio and Andres Pico built the ranch house, and in 1841 the region’s governor granted them the 230,000 acres that today run from Oceanside northward to Orange County’s Trabuco Canyon.

Four years earlier--in 1837--the Picos’ sister Ysidora married Englishman John Forster, who in 1845 bought the secularized Mission San Juan Capistrano from Pio Pico.

Over the next few years, while brother Andres went off to fight the encroaching Americans, the gambling Pio, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, found himself hopelessly in debt and facing angry creditors demanding the rancho as payment. Forster came to Pico’s rescue, paid off the bad debts and, in 1864, became the owner of the rancho--the same year he lost control of the mission, which was returned by order of President Lincoln to the Catholic Church.

For his part, Pico tried to salvage his political career and served for a time as a Los Angeles City Council member before dying almost penniless in 1894.

Forster died in 1882, and, though he had heirs, the indebted property was turned over to banker James Flood, who had struck it wildly rich with the Comstock Lode and looked to the area for land investments. He turned to Richard O’Neill, an Irish immigrant, to serve as ranch manager for a new cattle business on the property.

O’Neill and Flood struck a handshake deal so the Irishman could himself buy into the ranch; in 1906 by some accounts, 1912 by others, O’Neill paid Flood about $300,000 for his share and became both resident manager and part owner.

O’Neill and James Flood formed their cattle business, the Santa Margarita Co., shortly after the turn of the century. In the early years, cattle were shipped by boat to San Francisco; later, trains did the job. Through O’Neill’s savvy as a rancher--including introducing irrigation on the property--the cattle business thrived and the Santa Margarita Co. earned a worldwide reputation for its beef.

They were good times, especially when, during the Depression, family members would gather around and sip whiskey and gin that had been given to O’Neill by friends years earlier and stored in an attic that had previously served as a bedroom for the Indian servants.

The cattle company was dissolved in 1940, and the 230,000 acres were divvied up between descendants of Flood, Mary O’Neill Baumgartner (O’Neill’s sister) and Jerome O’Neill (his son).

The Flood and Baumgartner families sold their shares to the federal government for the U.S. Marine Corps base in 1942 for about $4.2 million, and the O’Neill family maintained ownership of the 70,000-acre rancho property to the north, where it spilled over into Orange County.

That part of the ranch was renamed Rancho Mission Viejo, and, in 1972 about 11,000 acres of it were sold to the Phillip Morris Co.--for more than $50 million--for the development of the sprawling Mission Viejo residential community.

The family sold other parts of the ranch property to the county of Orange and to private developers, and today retains ownership of 40,000 acres: 5,000 for their Rancho Santa Margarita residential development and 35,000 acres on which O’Neill’s Santa Margarita Co. runs 40,000 head of cattle just north of the San Diego-Orange County line.

The Marines, meanwhile, started building their training base in 1942. The base was named for Gen. Joseph H. Pendleton, a decorated Marine who retired, was elected mayor of Coronado and urged the Marine Corps to establish a West Coast training center even before the start of World War II. Pendleton died a month before President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the base.

Since then, Camp Pendleton has evolved into the busiest training camp under the Department of Defense and the only one where the Marines can simultaneously practice amphibious landings, ground maneuvers, artillery firing and air attacks with live ordnance.