Old El Toro's Transportation Hub

Take a look at the Disney-esque train depot in this photo, then feel free to heave a bittersweet sigh. Because unlike old El Toro’s one-room schoolhouse, Episcopal church, Bennett family ranch house and Serrano adobe, which can be visited at Lake Forest’s Heritage Hill, this charming El Toro train depot fell victim to “urban renewal” and today exists only in photographs and fond memories.  

Where exactly was the depot located? Well, if you travel El Toro Road toward the foothills, just past Muirlands and before Jeronimo, you might notice the road slopes up a bit more than usual. This is the railroad overpass, created in the late 1960s, that knocked out a great deal of Old El Toro.

If traffic isn’t heavy and your passengers will cooperate, there’s an opportunity to look down to the right and see railroad tracks, plus warehouse-type structures and, on the left, seemingly endless housing.

The warehouse and business area sits on what was once downtown El Toro. But today’s structures aren’t so far off the mark from 100 years ago. Warehouses that sheltered grain and produce before shipment, as well as cattle pens and a “clay dumps” area, once lined the area parallel to the tracks.

In those days, however, Front Street was more than just another side street.  It was the heart of the fledgling town, being the site of a hotel, a blacksmith and numerous residences, including the home of the warehouse foreman. Plus, just around the corner, facing Olive Avenue, the grammar school.

And immediately on the other side of the tracks, in the direction of El Camino Real? A pool hall, St. George’s Episcopal Mission and several farmhouses, all in peaceful coexistence.  

Now let’s return to 2011 for a moment. As you turn back in the direction of the freeway, once again approaching the train overpass, this time have your passenger look down to the right and note, on both sides of the tracks, the walled-in residential areas.

But also check out a fairly barren strip of land immediately along the rails. This is where the depot was located. Farther down was the home of the section foreman—the person in charge of railroad maintenance—as well as additional homes for his crew.

It also should  be noted that this side of El Toro Road—which, as we’ve previously learned, was then known as —was the site of El Toro’s general store, the Community Hall and, after 1913, , which by then had moved from its original site and become St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

And on the other side of the tracks, on your way to  El Camino Real: a baseball field!

That area along the tracks, now barren except for weeds, was one of two "downtown" parcels purchased by local farmer Joe Wilkes in 1886 from the Los Angeles bank that had foreclosed on Don Jose Serrano’s . Not long after his purchase, Wilkes sold one of the parcels to the railroad for $200. 

In the meantime, entrepreneur Dwight Whiting--who earlier made a much larger land purchase from the former Serrano property--granted a right-of-way conveyance on Feb. 25, 1887, to the San Bernardino and San Diego Railway Co. (the name of the branch line under the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe) with the agreement that the line should be completed and in operation within 18 months.

And so it happened that numerous crews graded and constructed a road bed for the tracks, then set down the ties and rails. And the jaunty little El Toro depot—where everyone from traveling salesmen to Helena Modjeska’s newly hired landscaper, , and dear friends such as famed pianist Ignace Paderewski would one day disembark—became a reality.