What Ever Happened to El Toro's Great Minnesotan Migration?

Anybody out there know what happened to 500 Minnesotans?

According to an article appearing in the Saturday, Jan. 31, 1903 edition of the Los Angeles Times, “El Toro ranch in Orange county [no capital “C” in those days!], one of the few large tracts of land in Southern California that remain undivided, is about to colonized by a large number of settlers from central and southern Minnesota.”

Mind you, I’m not saying it didn’t happen. But so far my research points to an El Toro population that, from its earliest days and right up through the mid-1960s, never went much above four or five hundred residents.

Before we go any further, I'd like to mention that I wouldn't have even known about the supposed Minnesotan migration if not for Herb Abrams, a volunteer at the Genealogy Collection of the Mission Viejo Library. Herb is a member of South Orange County California Genealogical Society and continues to be tremendously helpful in my quest for information about early El Toro and the folks who lived here.   

One of my requests, of course, has been for more information about , El Toro's founder.  

Whiting, as you’ll remember, first came up with the concept of populating this area with . But when that concept , El Toro’s great mover-and-shaker apparently decided to publicize his community elsewhere.

I'll admit I was used to reading about Whiting's high-energy wheelings and dealings. But when I learned he also was behind a purported mass exodus of Minnesotans, I was more than a little amazed.

Still, there it was. One decade after Whiting’s 1893 London publicity junket, the Times was headlining a heads-up story called “COLONY PLAN FOR EL TORO,” followed by a smaller headline reading “Dwight Whiting Parts With Property He Has Held for Twenty Years.”

Orange County's Solvang? 

And the plan, according to the Los Angeles Times article? 

“One hundred and fifty German and Scandinavian families of the big wheat-growing State are expected here within a few weeks to take up land, and before long it is promised that the 8000 acre property, now used as a cattle range and for a small amount of fruit raising and dairying, will be transformed into a prosperous colony of industrious farmers, who will engage in a diversity of pursuits pertaining to their calling.

“El Toro ranch,” the article continues, “has been owned for twenty years by Dwight Whiting of this city, and it was through his efforts that the plan for colonizing the land was perfected. Agents were sent into Minnesota to demonstrate to the thrifty farmers the possibilities of Southern California, and so well have they succeeded that the heads of families to the number named have disposed of their Minnesota holdings and are packing up their household goods preparatory for the journey across the continent. The total number of persons that will be in the party is estimated at 500.”

Good golly! Imagine 150 families suddenly pulling up stakes and moving to El Toro en masse? Thank goodness for the !  

Immigration Qualms

Reassurance to those already here must have been thought necessary, for the article’s next paragraph reports that “These farmers are Germans and Scandinavians of the second and third generations. Their fathers and grandfathers went from their native lands into the Northwest and made of Minnesota one of the greatest wheat-raising sections in the United States.  They are reported as a bright and industrious class, thoroughly Americanized, and are expected to do for the section into which they go what their ancestors did for Minnesota.”

As for the details of such an influx? “In confirming the report of the proposed colonization movement last night, Mr. Whiting said the land would be sold to the settlers in parcels of such size as they may desire. Dairying and fruit raising, he said, will be the principal industries, the soil, climatic conditions and abundance of water being especially suited to these branches. The raising of berries, early vegetables and winter garden truck also is possible.”

And just in case there’s any doubt as to where the 500 Minnesotans will be setting up, the article concludes by stating that “El Toro ranch is forty-seven miles south of Los Angeles on the Santa Fe line to San Diego. It is about thirteen miles from Santa Ana and nine miles from Laguna Beach. West of it stretches the big San Joaquin ranch, the Miguel ranch is on its south, and on the east are the Trabuca and Mission Viejo ranches, a total of 200,000 acres of rolling range. The ranch is in the Santa Ana Valley, its railroad station is El Toro.”

Of course you and I know better—that “Miguel ranch” was actually ’s Niguel Ranch—and that “the Trabuca” is more accurately referred to as “the Trabuco,” an area now occupied by the City of Rancho Santa Margarita.  

As to the veracity of the rest of article? Well, while it’s very true that many individual El Toro pioneers were of Scandinavian and/or German heritage—a good example being that of the , whose patriarch, John Osterman,  immigrated to Wisconsin from Sweden, and eventually to this area, right about the time of the Los Angeles Times article—I’m not entirely convinced that The Great Minnesota Exodus ever occurred.

But if I find evidence to the contrary, you’ll be the first to know!