El Toro Provides a Final Resting Place for Its Citizens

“Everything that lives will someday die.”

At some point we all find ourselves gently telling that to our kids. But typically they’re in grade school by the time they start asking questions about death. And usually those questions are prompted by the loss of a grandparent or a pet.

Then there’s the case of 4-year-old Bennie Osterman and his 2 ½-year-old brother George, who one day in February 1900 sat huddled together on a hill above their parents' homestead, watching the final act of a family tragedy unfold.

The Osterman homestead was located not far from what would become, 100 years later, the city of Rancho Santa Margarita. But in those days it was a remote backcountry location, the closest hamlet being the newly-founded El Toro. Only their widowed Grandpa Havens and his younger children plus a few additional homesteaders lived anywhere close by.

As the two little boys continue to sit on the hillside, their mother’s body was brought out and placed in a wagon. Years later, Bennie would tell his nephew that he'd never forget putting his arm around his little brother (Joe's father) “as we watched the wagon move down the road, taking our mother to her final resting place in Santa Ana.”

THANKS TO THE EL TORO LAND & WATER COMPANY  

Sadie Annetta Osterman, 24, had died February 8 of what was then called consumption and is now known as tuberculosis. Her distraught widower, John Osterman, agreed with his Havens in-laws that Sadie be interred at Santa Ana Cemetery next to her mother, who had died six years earlier.

But changes had been occurring, even in this "backwoods" area. And the folks behind the El Toro Land & Water Company, responsible primarily for the building of wells, decided it was time to fund a burial grounds. This was accomplished by offering stock to prospective buyers as well as plots for $1 each. Very soon, —which itself consisted of little more than the , , store, and blacksmith’s shop—were set aside in 1896.

As was the case with Sadie Osterman, family tradition would dictate that many meeting their maker in El Toro and its environs be buried at the Santa Ana Cemetery. But as the years went on, the focus began to shift to the .

The first person to be buried at the cemetery was Maude Simmons, the younger sister of Louisa Simmons, who'd married El Toro's first section foreman, James DeLong. Her gravesite, plus those of such El Toro pioneers as Anton Carle, the man employed by Dwight Whiting to install the community's many groves of eucalyptus, are still to be found on a shaded hillside in today's . 

As one walks among the gravesites, in fact, many familiar names can be noted. Among them, the and Acunas are represented, as are the Cook, , , Scott, Stevens, , and  families. Here also is where , the cemetery's only known Civil War veteran, is interred. But arguably the most prominent markers commemorate the , who (unlike their and son-in-law) decided to spend the rest of their days in El Toro.  

By 1927 the El Toro Land & Water Company sold the cemetery to Orange County for $10. Today, under the name of , it serves as headquarters for the Orange County Cemetery District, which also maintains the equally historic Santa Ana and Anaheim Cemeteries.  

Today the cemetery is surrounded by the city of Lake Forest. But upon entering the gates, driving up the hill and parking alongside the typically century-old grave markers, one is tempted to wonder what all of these folks might make of the changes that have occurred in the last 100 years. Trabuco Road is now a major thoroughfare, and nearby the land once dominated by chaparral and cactus accomodates entire communities of single family homes, condos, and apartments. 

Amazed might be the typical reaction. But also, upon reminding us they'd been the first and second generations to establish what has become not just a viable but exceptionally thriving community? Certainly a great deal of pride!