Places in the Heart : Family Dream of Preserving a Slice of Escondido History Dies With Property Sale

Frances Beven Ryan, who has lived all of her 88 years in Escondido, decided about 17 years ago that she wanted to preserve a little bit of “the way it was” for generations yet to be.

So she and her late husband, artist Lewis Ryan, deeded their 15 acres of unspoiled property--with its towering Engelmann oaks and rocky hillsides--to the University of California, her alma mater, as a nature reserve. Or so they thought.

The couple reserved the right to live out their lives on the property in a tiny cottage that had been built by Frances’ father, Albert Beven, in l9l8.

“It was a grand day, that day of the dedication,” Ryan recalled, bringing out her scrapbooks. “People came from all over.” Indeed, many of the town’s founding families, local politicians, even a University of California dignitary or two from Berkeley. There were speeches and dedication of a handsome bronze plaque:

University of California Natural Land and Water Reserves System. Ryan Oak Glen Reserve. Dedicated April 26, l975. In Recognition of the Generosity Of Frances and Lewis Ryan And the Fulfillment Of Their Lifelong Dream.

But that happy day also contained “our first inkling that things might not be as they seemed,” Ryan said. One of the university speakers told the assemblage of about 200, “We take reserve land any way we can get it, and we take money, too,” Ryan recalled.

The inkling became a certainty last year when the Ryans’ land was removed from the UC natural reserve system and sold, despite a clause in the gift deed restricting disposal of the property until the Ryans’ deaths.

The new owners already have begun to clear part of the land for construction of an antique automobile museum.

To Frances Beven Ryan, a teacher, writer and world traveler who has championed far-flung causes, from saving Central American rain forests to building a church in India, the hometown project was closest to her heart. With its loss, she vowed to return or disavow more than 160 honors and plaques she had received in recognition of her 15 years as caretaker of the little preserve.

The Ryans searched long before turning over their rural acreage about 4 miles northeast of Escondido’s business district to the University of California Board of Regents. They went first to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, who were reluctant to accept the property and maintain it as a natural park.

“They said they just didn’t have the money to take on the maintenance of another park,” she said, “and, without that, the place would be filled with beer cans and banana peels.”

The couple tried the Nature Conservancy and were told that their land had “great potential” but that the state agency only acquires land to turn it over to some other group to manage.

The Ryans also went to nearby Palomar College. Administrators there thought a nature preserve of rare native plants was a good idea but said that, as a new junior college, they lacked the funds to take on the task of creating one.

So, when they heard of the university’s reserve program, Ryan said, “it seemed too perfect to be true.” Now she says it was.

On Oct. 29, l987, she learned that the University of California Natural Reserve System was selling the Ryan Oak Glen Reserve to Billy D. and Ethel Norman of Escondido for $80,000, with the proviso that the property not be disturbed except for the construction of a residence, associated outbuildings and a museum to display vintage automobiles and related memorabilia.

Frances Ryan, whose husband had died five years earlier, was allowed under the terms of the sale to remain in her cottage for the rest of her life.

“I suppose they needed the money,” she said of the university’s unexpected move. “I think that’s what they were thinking of--the money--all the time.”

Ironically, Frances Ryan had decided not to bequeath her share of the family’s land to her four brothers and sisters for fear that, “in a generation or two or three, they would decide to rent it out or sell it.”

So she gave it to the university because, “if you can’t trust your own alma mater, whom can you trust?”

Now she says of her decision, “It was the most colossal mistake of my life, a nightmarish shattering of life’s dream.”

In her initial anger, Ryan walked to the entrance of the reserve, where a redwood plaque donated by Escondido community groups proclaimed the “Ryan Oak Glen Reserve.” She painted out the “Ryan.” And next to a massive rock where the handsome bronze dedication plaque is affixed, she erected a cross bearing the inscription, “R.I.P.--ROGR” to mark the passing of the Ryan Oak Glen Reserve.

Roger Samuelsen, director of the UC reserve system, sighed as he recalled the day he told Frances Ryan that the preserve would be sold. He said that he assured her that the sale would not mar her dream of preserving the rare Engelmann oak that shades her cottage with its massive canopy, or of preserving a bit of Escondido the way it was when the Indians lived beneath the same sheltering branches.

The decision to dispose of the Escondido reserve was done “after considerable evaluation” by an advisory committee, Samuelsen said. The Ryan property was too distant from the students studying botany (the UC San Diego campus has no botany department), and too small to make it valuable for teaching and research, he explained.

The bottom line, Samuelsen said, was that the preserve “was not viable to hold in the name of the university.”

The sale to the Normans was a compromise aimed at preserving most of the property in its natural state, he said.

Ethel Norman is Frances Ryan’s second cousin, and the Normans agreed that only a small portion of the property would be developed, Samuelsen explained. Because of these restrictions, the land, valued at $160,000, was sold for half price.

Frances Ryan made overtures to buy the land back when she learned it was to be sold, Samuelsen said, “but we felt that it would be unwise for a widow lady to be dipping into her estate. Fortunately, the Normans came forward, and we felt that this would be a better way to go.”

“When I asked him (Samuelsen) to name a price, he wouldn’t do it,” Ryan said. “He asked me what I wanted to do with the property, and I told him that it was none of his business, just name the price. But he wouldn’t.”

Ryan said she has no quarrel with the Normans.

“They are real nice people and they have been very nice to me,” she said. But she doesn’t glance at the reddish scar by the preserve entrance where the vegetation has been stripped in preparation for a building pad.

She still chafes at the mistake she believes she made in deeding the land to her alma mater, and she has considered bringing suit. The deed of gift agreement she made in 1973 allowed for the sale of the estate “if circumstances no longer permit beneficial use of said property,” but said that right could be exercised only “after termination of our life interests.”

“And I’m still alive, whether they care to believe it or not,” she said, adding, “but, by the time I sued and won, I’d likely be dead.”

Despite her strong Escondido roots, Ryan’s interests have taken her around the world more than once. She graduated at the top of her class from the University of California, Southern Branch (now UCLA), was named a Phi Beta Kappa while earning her master’s degree at USC, received a Fulbright scholarship, taught home economics for 30 years, wrote five books on Escondido history, and, now that her 15 years as caretaker of the preserve have ended, has launched into new endeavors.

She also donated funds to buy and preserve rain forests in Costa Rica, then traveled there to be sure the money was well-spent. She endowed a church in Madras, India, a place where she once watched as hordes of beggars lined the road, waiting for the rich to ride by on elephants and toss them alms.

But she believes that she has not yet accomplished her goal of leaving something of worth in Escondido to document the early days of its history.

“Since the preserve is gone, I’ve decided that I just have to find something else,” she said. The “something else” is to be a place to keep more than 100 years’ worth of mementos.

There ought to be a place for “treasures of the past,” Ryan said, a pioneer room where they can be displayed for future generations. She is raising money and support for just such a place. Perhaps it will be situated at the Escondido city library or at a branch yet to be built in the Orange Glen area where her ancestors settled.

But, if her dream does not come to pass before she dies, Ryan is firm in her resolve that her family heirlooms be destroyed, “not turned over to some antique dealer who would make a lot of money on them.”

“My family was one of the founding families here, and I want a place for my history after I’m gone,” she explained. “Otherwise, I want them to burn all these things I’ve collected in my lifetime.”