Fine Dining at the Nellie Gail Ranch in Orange County California #finedining #countryclub #restaurant #wine #beer #foodie #foodlover
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Tony Verdenne
Nestled in the rolling hills of Orange County, Nellie Gail is a beautiful neighborhood with large estates and lovely trails. Before the homes and amazing landscapes, the name belonged to an incredible woman: Nellie Gail Moulton.
Originally from Kansas, Nellie spent her life in several states. After her birth in December 1878, Nellie moved to Nebraska, where she lived until the early 1900s. She moved to Washington and became a school teacher, but often visited Southern California, where her father was a storekeeper in El Toro.
Lewis Moulton was born in Chicago in 1854. Raised by a family of doctors, he yearned for an outdoor lifestyle. At the age of twenty, he followed his heart and began his journey to California. As this was long before the era of commercial airlines, his journey was not a short trip. First, he took a boat to the Isthmus of Panama, where he crossed the land by train. Then he took another boat to San Francisco, where he caught yet another boat headed toward San Diego. He disembarked from the San Diego bound boat at Wilmington, where he proceeded by coach to Santa Ana.
Finally, in Santa Ana, Moulton began living the outdoor lifestyle he had always dreamed about. He immediately found work under Charles French tending to sheep but was soon able to buy out the business. As the owner of French’s business, Moulton continued tending sheep and rented land all the way from Oceanside to Wilmington. In 1881, he bought out Jonathan Bacon’s sheep and rented his 1,600 acres, and in 1884 he rented Cyrus Rawson’s 17,000 acres. Moulton was renting the entirety of Rancho Niguel, a 19,000-acre plot of land that was known at the time by the Native American pronunciation, Rancho “Nee-well”.
Moulton found himself a business partner, Jean Pierre Daguerre. Daguerre was a French Basque émigré who had moved to California around the same time as Moulton, and he too had immediately involved himself in the sheep business. The partnership was the beginning of a long and successful personal and professional relationship between the two men and their families. In 1895, Moulton purchased all of the land he had previously rented, and together, they successfully utilized the land for raising sheep and dry-farming. With financial aid from his uncle in Boston, Moulton continued to purchase more pieces of land until their ranch comprised of 21,723 acres. But with hard work, Moulton’s business succeeded and he paid his uncle back in no time.
As his business bloomed, Moulton’s first marriage wilted, and he was divorced in 1899. But soon enough he laid eyes on Nellie Gail when they ran into each other at her father’s shop. He courted her for many years until they were finally married in 1908.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Honolulu before they settled down on what we now call Nellie Gail Ranch. Here, they raised their two daughters, Charlotte and Louise. The firstborn, Charlotte, was born in a hospital in Los Angeles on January 1st,1910. Her birthplace was fitting, seeing as she grew up to be quite the city girl. She went to school in Santa Ana and stayed with her friends there instead of living on her father’s ranch. Louise, on the other hand, was born on December 30th, 1914 right on the ranch in El Toro. She lived there with her family throughout her childhood and became quite the horsewoman, riding to and from school every day on her pony Dickie, a gift from her father.
Right up to the birth of Moulton’s first daughter, the ranch was thriving. But in 1911, his friend and partner Daguerre was killed in a tragic accident. A team of horses he had been driving were spooked by the passing of an automobile. When they bolted, the wagon rolled and crushed poor Daguerre. While the two families remained friends and partners, Daguerre’s death was the beginning of the ranch’s downfall.
The one successful decision the families made without Daguerre was to turn their sheep business into a cattle business. The land was often too dry for the sheep and they sometimes had to drive the animals all the way to Big Bear Lake just to graze them. While making the transition may have been a sound decision, in 1919 another disaster hit. The influenza pandemic befell many of the Moultons and killed Domingo, Daguerre’s only son.
The cattle business lingered on until Lewis Moulton died in 1938, just before his eighty-fifth birthday. Nellie, age fifty-nine, took over managing the land until 1950 when she turned it over to her daughters and the Daguerre daughters. The Daguerre daughters soon gave up on the business and the land was split up between the two families.
Today, there are 25 miles of riding trails in Nellie Gail Ranch for the enjoyment of residents and horses alike.