CurtesyFlush
Bababooey, fafafooey, tatatoothy.
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join:2002-08-23
Fontana, CA
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Dana Point and Capistrano
Pic 1 is what Dana Point, the actual geographical point, and Dana Cove looked like when I was a kid. As young kids, we used to play in the tidepools down in the bottom of the pic. As I got older I'd snorkel dive out further and get my limit of abalone off the rocks.
Pic 2 is downtown San Juan Capistrano in the late fifties. From the top you see Honeyman's orange groves going from center to right. The long line of narrow metal buildings towards the lower part of the groves are the packing sheds and Cole's Egg Ranch, where we'd buy all our fresh eggs. In the center is the Mission complex. North of that are the residential areas of Mission Flats (off El Horno St) and Mission Hill just above the Flats.
Just below the Flats you can see the oval track of Capo Union High School's athletic field. (YAY COUGARS!) The HS complex itself is to the right of the aforementioned residential areas. The large blocky profile of the Williams Gym is visible in the south portion of the complex. That's where I attended my first ever dance, a sock hop, back when I was in 7th grade. The Capistrano Branch of the ORCO Library now sits where the gym stood. I'll never forget how much trouble they had knocking that venerable old building down. They finally had to bring it down with dynamite. And they were afraid it would fall in an earthquake.
To the left of center sits the red brick Capistrano Hotel. It was razed in the early sixties. Oddly enough, many of the buildings in this photograph still exist.
Pic 3 is looking north up the valley in the early sixties. Notice how I-5 consists of a mere 2 lanes in each direction. The road to the left of the freeway is old 101, now known as Camino Capistrano. The beginning of the curve in the freeway (just out of sight to the right bottom of ther pic) is now known as the Las Ramblas curve, where the offramp for PCH and Dana Point takes off.
The hill and groves with the eucalyptus and houses in the left foreground, what we called Rosan's Hill, has been completely shaved down and now sprouts some auto dealers. To the left of the hill is a faint green smudge with some asphalt below it. That's the NE portion of the old Capistrano Airport, a small grass strip general aviation facility. It roughly paralleled the flood control channel of San Juan Creek, visible here as a white stripe going left to right. That's the genesis for the street that now bisects that area, Avenida Aeropuerto. There used to be air shows there in the summer, complete with vintage fighters from both wars.
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Life Member, NRA and CRPA. |
