Community Corner
'Mayberry R.F.D.' Fans Would Have Loved Old El Toro
If you liked the 1960s sitcom, you might have felt right at home in south Orange County.
Take a good look at the photo that accompanies this story. Recognize anything?
Unless you’ve lived here more than 40 years, probably not.
The view is of El Toro Road, near Jeronimo. The building on the left is the Community Hall, and to the right is St. Anthony's Catholic Church.
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You now might be saying, “What community hall? And, say, doesn’t that church look like the schoolhouse at Heritage Hill?”
My, what sharp eyes you have! Yes, the building to the right is El Toro’s first schoolhouse, originally located at the west corner of First and Olive streets. You might remember from a previous El Toro & More installment that entrepreneur .
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By 1913, however, folks decided to raise funds for a bigger school. Eventually, the one-room grammar school was sold to Juan and Antoinette Gless. They moved the structure across the fields to El Toro Road in 1915, not long after a new red brick schoolhouse featuring two large classrooms was built near the original school.
(The Glesses were Basque shepherds who arrived in El Toro in the early 1900s. They and other Basques will be the subject of a future El Toro & More column.)
It became St. Anthony's Catholic Church, and parishioners worshipped there until 1968. During the early 1970s, the unoccupied building suffered from vandalism, but in 1976 it was acquired by the County of Orange and moved to its current location at Heritage Hill. There, it was restored to its original grammar school appearance.
As for the Community Hall, well, I’m sorry to tell you it could not be saved. But let’s save the subject of its demolition for another time.
Instead, I’d like to focus on what an important role the Community Hall played in El Toro life for six decades. As Joe Osterman says in his Old El Toro Reader, around the year 1900, “people felt that they should have a place where they could get together.” So, they set about raising money, with the women organizing quilting bees, bake sales and dances—and the men holding turkey shoots and barbecues. Eventually, the money for the building materials was raised.
Next, the men—with some help from an outside contractor—set about building the hall. As you might have noticed from the photo, it was not an ordinary structure, being eight-sided rather than a conventional box. Inside, it featured a hardwood dance floor, an elevated stage on the west side, a kitchen and cloakrooms. (No restrooms, however, unless one counted the outhouses, about 50 yards out back.)
Benches surrounded the dance floor, although extra chairs could be brought in as needed. In the middle of the hall stood a huge pole; outside, you could tell the pole’s location by the peaked roof.
“The hall was the center of El Toro social life,” Osterman says. Dances were held Saturday night only, since Sunday was the only day that El Toro farmers rested. Entire families would attend, eventually tucking sleepy children into transportable bedding in the wagons outside because dancing often continued until dawn.
“Musicians weren’t allowed to quit,” Osterman adds. “People passed the hat for money to pay them.”
But the hall wasn’t used just on Saturday nights. School events, such as the annual Christmas pageant and June graduation ceremonies, also were held at the hall. So were an annual Easter party, just about every wedding reception in the immediate area, and meetings of the local women's club.
Change, as we know, is inevitable. And, today, a wide variety of recreational facilities and places of worship are available to Lake Forest residents. Still, it’s interesting to contemplate what it must have been like to live in and around old El Toro, when life revolved around the planting, growing and harvesting seasons, with regular time out for church, dances and school events.