Dry Years of 1862-65 Changed O.C. Life : Drought: It brought financial ruin to many and led to the breakup of the great ranchos, changing the landscape.

The killer drought arrived after two years of rain, striking with the wallop of a lethal blow.

Heavy rains had prompted the area’s cattlemen, buoyed with confidence by years of abundant, water-soaked pastures, to overstock their ranches. But two months of dryness were followed by a third, then another, and another.

Soon, Southern California was caught in the middle of what some historians labeled the Great Drought. The year was 1862.

“Hundreds of gaunt, skeletonlike forms moved slowly over the plains in search of food,” historian James M. Quinn wrote. “It was a pitiful sight. The loss of cattle during the famine was fearful. The plains were strewn with their carcasses.”

The five-year dry spell of the late 1980s and early 1990s may seem like the worst ever, after generating rising water bills, Metropolitan Water District penalties and great media attention. But while it has indeed changed lifestyles and harmed the economy, the impact has been small in contrast with the financial ruin and change in the landscape caused by the drought of 1862-65, considered by historians to be the granddaddy of all California droughts.

And the offspring of that drought remain evident today. The development of Orange County, which grew out of the death of the ranchos of the pre-Civil War era, has a legacy extending almost directly back to 1862.

The 1862 drought “did lead to the breakup of the great ranchos,” said William Hendricks, director of Corona del Mar’s Sherman Library, which houses an archive. “It helped push many of these ranchos to the wall, and therefore led to them selling off these ranchos (for) farmlands, and then development.”

The highly profitable ranch lands dried up with the three-year drought, historians said. Thousands of animals were slaughtered for hides and horns. Cattle that had sold for 6 cents a pound were being skinned for $2 a hide. Meanwhile, vaqueros from the great ranchos were forced to drive the remaining cattle from the area, then known as the Santa Ana Valley, to Mojave Lake, historians noted.

The California Historical Society Quarterly noted that remaining cattle “faced starvation and were driven over cliffs at San Pedro” as a “merciful solution” to the problem.

Jim Sleeper, an Orange County historian, said that land baron Don Jose Andres Sepulveda, who had acquired the vast Rancho San Joaquin, was devastated by the loss of tens of thousands of cattle.

In 1864, at the height of the drought, Sepulveda sold 50,000 acres of his rancho for $18,000, roughly 36 cents an acre. Before the drought, land values were assessed at 50 cents an acre but eventually fell to 25 cents as the drought worsened.

One of the four buyers was James Irvine Sr., whose land eventually became part of the Irvine Ranch, where the cities of Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Corona del Mar now stand.

Don Abel Stearns, another major landowner, sold his Rancho Los Alamitos to a Michael Reese of San Francisco, who held his note for $20,000 “with interest.” That note granted Reese a strip of land about eight miles wide, from the ocean at Seal Beach inland to what is now Cypress.

Droughts are not uncommon when viewed through the historical looking glass, Sleeper said. For example, Sleeper said that in 1876-77, just a scant 4 inches of rain fell in what was then the Anaheim Colony. In the late 1800s, annual rainfall for the Santa Ana Valley averaged 13 to 14 inches, which would qualify the 1876-77 year as a drought, Sleeper said.

“Anytime you get such a low rainfall figure in Southern California, which is essentially a desert, you get a drought,” Sleeper said.

Water experts cite studies finding that California history is laced with five-year droughts. But these experts hesitate when it comes to drought predictions.

“I’m rather skeptical that there is any cycle that is useful for predicting droughts,” said Maurice Roos, chief hydrologist for the state Department of Water Resources. “About the only thing we’re certain of is that droughts are irregular.”

California has had worse droughts in terms of rainfall, Roos said. But in terms of economic loss, the so-called Great Drought was probably most devastating because the early ranchos lacked today’s reservoir water storage.

Among that drought’s destructive effects:

* The wheat crop was ruined, and hay became so scarce that it sold for $60 a ton, several times more than what it was worth before the drought. In the spring of 1864, not one cent of taxes was collected in Los Angeles County, which included the ranchos, because of the drought and foreclosures.

* Stockmen built huge steam vats along the coast from San Francisco to San Diego. These establishments were called matanzas, a Spanish word for a place where cattle were slaughtered. Some of the sheep and cattle that were able to travel were driven to the matanzas and slaughtered. Their hides were taken off and dried for shipment, and the carcasses were thrown into the vats and steamed, reducing them to tallow, which was used in making candles and soap.

* The Anaheim Colony was an enclave of German winemakers. The colony had built ditches to hold water and protect its wineries. To prevent thirsty cattle from invading the grapevines, the winemakers hired Luis Aguilar, a vaquero, to keep the cattle out for $60 a month, a handsome sum in those days.

The impact of the drought was not lost on Irvine, who eventually owned Rancho San Joaquin. After buying the failed ranchos at low prices, Irvine and his son, James Irvine Jr., started stringent methods of water conservation, Sleeper said.

“Everybody said he (Irvine’s son) was water crazy because he had crews who, people thought, worked around the clock drilling for water,” Sleeper said.

The drought was officially over when a severe flood followed by several years of normal rainfall replenished the water table and produced artesian wells that were Santa Ana’s first water source, Sleeper said.

“Our water table in Orange County used to be so high, it used to have artesian springs, and in the old days you could stick a pipe in the ground, and you could get water going through and spilling over the pipe,” Sleeper said.

As early as 1910, Irvine’s son believed that his ranch could profitably use 1,000 more inches of water from outside sources. Because that was not available, he added more and more wells until he drilled 1,200 wells, spending $3 million to $4 million.

Eventually, the Irvine Co., which became the largest landholder in the county, introduced a major program of water conservation and incidental flood control, parts of which are still in use today.