Scouting Out the Ranch : Troops Get First Taste of 188-Acre Site That a Lot of Thin Mints Helped Pay For

Call it the ranch that a drug lord built and cookies bought.

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The Girl Scout Council of Orange County opened its sprawling Rancho del Rio for the first time Saturday and celebrated in typical Scout fashion. Young girls hiked, picnicked and explored the rambling hacienda, log cabins and intricate stone cottages that are scattered across the 188-acre enclave tucked in a narrow canyon of live oaks and sycamores, east of San Juan Capistrano.

About 55 local Girl Scouts and their leaders spent opening day on the ranch bought from the county three years ago for $2.38 million--all of the money coming from cookie sales. Scout leaders raved about the ranch, not only for its colorful history, but for the unique opportunity it affords them.

“Standing here, it’s hard to believe San Juan Capistrano and the boats in Dana Point Harbor are only about 10 miles away,” said Harriet Ottaviano of Seal Beach, the Scout council’s assistant program director. “That’s what’s wonderful about this ranch. It’s close, but when you’re here you feel like you’re far away.”

The leaders joked about their new campsite’s past as a hide-out and marijuana warehouse for drug kingpin Daniel James Fowlie, who was convicted of drug smuggling charges in 1991, six years after narcotics agents seized his beloved ranch. A federal judge fined Fowlie $1 million and sent him to prison for 30 years.

“His misfortune was our good luck,” said Lorel Roehl, 34, of Irvine, the director of outdoor programs for the local council, which governs 23,000 Scouts in the county. “We had been looking for a place like this for 10 years.”

Fowlie lost his ranch in an odd chain of events that started at 2 a.m. on a February morning in 1985 and ended with the smuggler’s downfall. On that night, the ranch foreman snapped in Laguna Beach after a binge of drug abuse and began shooting a gun into the early morning darkness, bringing on the police.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies found $73,000 in cash and a 50-pound bale of marijuana in the Laguna home where the foreman was staying, and a subsequent investigation led deputies to the remote ranch on a winding dirt road through Verdugo Canyon, just off Ortega Highway near Ronald W. Caspers Regional Park.

Sheriff Brad Gates controlled the ranch for six years and promoted it as a site for a regional drug-enforcement training center. In 1989, President George Bush visited Rancho Del Rio and gave a major drug speech that was televised nationally. During the visit, the President endorsed plans for a training center.

But the Orange County Board of Supervisors eventually balked at the sheriff’s proposal and put Rancho Del Rio up to bid. The Girl Scouts won the ranch over Hanu Reddy Realty of Irvine.

“Really, we are a perfect owner for a place like this because we are going to respect the land and the animals around here,” Roehl said. “It offers us a chance to educate our girls about the environment. We have things like the gnatcatcher up here, which is something they can’t find in the city.”

Before they bought the ranch, the county’s Girl Scouts relied on the 700-acre Camp Scherman near Idyllwild for outdoor activities. But now they have a site much more conducive to day camps, said Diane Smith, a Scout spokeswoman.

“We are very fortunate. You just aren’t going to find 188 acres in Orange County nowadays,” Smith said. “This is just a short drive away from most of our troops.”

The council has spent the past three years obtaining county permits needed to bring Scouts to the ranch. The grounds have been weeded and spruced up with flowers, but little has been done to the ornate structures.

“We still need to make some difficult decisions about which of these buildings we want to make earthquake-proof,” said Roehl, adding that none were built to code or with proper permits.

The ranch has a wealth of amenities: a wine cellar, a former casino, four wells, horse stables, a rock barbecue, dog kennels, a vineyard and fruit orchards, and several cabins that can serve as home sites. There’s also a warehouse that could be converted to a gymnasium for volleyball and basketball, and plenty of space for horseback riding, archery, backpacking and educational activities.

Nedy Garcia, 17, said the ranch is perfect for camping because it is an unspoiled area.

“It’s more primitive than our other campgrounds,” said Garcia, a junior at Santa Ana Valley High School. “There are no bathrooms or things like that.”

On Saturday, Christina Rasch of Huntington Beach made the trip to the ranch with her fellow Scouts from Troop 90. They spent the morning hiking along the dirt paths that veer out from the flat valley floor, looking for wildlife and listening as their guides explained the flora and fauna of the unspoiled county wilderness.

“I really like the animals the best. They remind me of my guinea pig at home,” said the smiling Rasch, a sixth-grader at Carden Academy in Huntington Beach. Next weekend, the Scouts will have the first overnight camp out at the ranch.

“It has been getting harder and harder to find a place for our Scouts,” Roehl said. “The parks and campgrounds around here are constantly getting more crowded and more expensive. That’s why this ranch is so great for us.”