Meet the Expert: Emily Fawcett & the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society
The story of Southern California's most glamorous town, feat. Native American heritage, railroad fails & stars of the golden age of Hollywood
21st & 18th reports on the pulse of culture, then & now. Covering art, history and fashion and featuring interviews with voices in fashion and leaders in the arts. Written by Lauren Lynch Wemple (@lolynchwemple), you can expect two articles per week.
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Rancho Santa Fe, California, 3 December 2021
The evening before I got married, I was wandering through my hometown of Rancho Santa Fe with my husband-to-be, Wemple, and I, like many brides before me, felt suspended in time. We walked up the brick path leading to the always charming Inn at Rancho Santa Fe1, and smiled up at one another strolling by historic white stucco adobe buildings as coastal fog rolled into Rancho enveloping us. Sometimes I daydream about this day and how special it was for us, and my mind turns to the many others who have made memories in Rancho Santa Fe just as we did.
This morning, you find me reminiscing on my wedding weekend and philosophizing about life because of my recent conversation with Emily Fawcett, of the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society. Like always on 21st & 18th, I prose on about how important it is to be a student of history, stay curious and explore culture through art, fashion, craft and travel, and while all of that is true, we don’t always have to answer the big, hairy questions or read a biography about a Russian Czar. Rather we can study history in small yet important ways, looking to our neighborhoods or hometowns and local historical societies for inspiration. History is the story of everyone, and preserving these stories, large and small, ensures perspective and understanding for us today and generations to come.
Moments like weddings, funerals, birthdays and other commemorations mark milestones in our personal histories melding each of us closer to our towns and communities. How did Rancho Santa Fe become the magical, community rich town it is today? Where did it all start? Who lived here in the beginning? Who placed the first brick?
Rancho Santa Fe, California, 25 March 2024
LLW: For our readers, Emily, would you introduce yourself?
EF: My name is Emily Fawcett, and I am the executive director of the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society.
LLW: Fantastic. What did you do before you started working at the historical society?
EF: I am the founder of a professional organizing business called Ruskin Road2. My business helps people declutter and organize, move and downsize and, recently, I helped organize and digitize historic photos for a Client which resulted in a really cool genealogy book. We found 3,000 family photos dating back to the early 1800s, and we digitized about 1,000 of them. Ruskin Road is a great company and allows me to meet great people.
LLW: Almost like being an archivist.
EF: Yes, it can be.
LLW: People oftentimes don't consider paper to be necessarily important anymore unless it's the Declaration of Independence, but you never know what pieces of the puzzle historians and researchers may need, and it’s important for someone to play historian for your own family’s history.
EF: It all certainly runs into what I'm doing here at the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society.
LLW: Let's chat about that for a minute. What does it mean to be the executive director of this organization?
EF: I serve at the pleasure of our board, and I keep things moving forward here. We are the stewards of this wonderful 100 year old home, the first home in Rancho Santa Fe called La Flecha House3. There's quite a bit of maintenance that's involved here, and I keep the lights on, pay the bills…work within an approved operating budget, and manage the finances and ensure the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society continues its mission and moves forward.
I'm also the membership liaison and give tours here and share with visitors about the rich history of Rancho Santa Fe. As well I organize speaker series, and educational programs and events and serve on several committees.
LLW: You wear a lot of hats.
EF: Yes. Lots and lots of hats.
LLW: Can you tell us what the mission of RSFHS is? And what are your general day to day goals?
EF: The mission of the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society is to collect, preserve, interpret, as well as protect the documents, media, and artifacts that connect Rancho Santa Fe to its rich history. As I mentioned, we're the stewards of the 100 year old La Flecha House [designed by architect Lilian J. Rice4], and we strive to educate the community and visitors about the history of the Ranch. We do educational programs, exhibitions, and historic publications. We're a nonprofit organization, and we really rely on memberships and grants to continue our work. We bring a lot of people together from the community which is the really fun part of my job.
LLW: That's really important, as someone who grew up here and especially in this digital age we need organizations and community leaders who bring people together.
You mentioned that RSFHS is committed, among other things, to preserving artifacts and documents related to the history of Rancho Santa Fe. What does that mean for your organization? Do people donate documents to you all?
EF: Yes. Behind that door right there is our archives, which is a very robust archive of tens of thousands of photographs, documents and old publications. You name it, we've probably got it. The Historical Society was founded in 1985, and has been collecting and preserving documents and artifacts since then. We're happy to say that now we've got about 75% of our collection digitized.
LLW: Impressive for a small organization!
EF: It's been an ongoing process a couple years in the making. Within the next 12 to 18 months our goal is to have a user friendly searchable database. There's a company I would love to use, but we can't afford it at the moment. If anyone out there wants to sponsor this software, by all means, give me a call. It's going to be wonderful for our community, historians and students to be able to access all of this information quickly and easily.
LLW: Right now, if someone wants to access the archive, do they email your team and make an appointment?
EF: Yes, and typically, they would let us know what they’re looking for, what they are researching or what they want to know about, and then we can pull from the archive for them.
LLW: You briefly mentioned Lilian Rice and we will discuss her more later. For our Readers, I want to set the scene of Rancho Santa Fe in the early 20th century, who are some of the other well known residents of the Ranch?
EF: Probably most notable was Bing Crosby5 and his wife, Dixie Lee6, who, interestingly, started out more famous than Bing. Dixie was an actress who has made a name for herself in silent films. They moved to the Ranch in the 1930s.
LLW: The era of silent film stars! How cool.
EF: Do you remember the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby7?
LLW: Sure.
EF: Around that time, in the 1930s, there was lots of news about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh’s baby and Dixie and Bing had small children and wanted to get out of Los Angeles. They wanted to find a quiet little place to raise their family. That place was Rancho Santa Fe.
LLW: Wow. So they came down here to Rancho Santa Fe to find privacy and ensure the safety of their children?
EF: Yes, they wanted to feel safe. A lot of folks at that time would come from Los Angeles, to get a break, or some R & R,and they would stay at La Morada8 or The Guest House.
LLW: The Inn!
EF: Yes, today it’s become The Inn. I can't remember if it was Bing or Douglas Fairbanks, but one of them was really ill on a visit to Rancho Santa Fe and went to the Inn and had some fresh squeezed local orange juice, and was, apparently, nursed back to health and said, “That’s it. The waters of life.” Or something like that. My colleague Amy Hartman knows a lot about Bing’s history.
LLW: That would be a great scene in a TV series. Fascinating.
EF: [Anyway] Bing Crosby and Dixie Lee bought a house, called Osuna 2, a property that dates back to the 1800s, which was refurbished for them by Lilian Rice.
LLW: Does Osuna 2 still exist today?
EF: It does still exist, yes.
LLW: We’ve a load of historic personalities to focus on here in Rancho Santa Fe.
EF: We can’t forget that originally native peoples, like the Kumeyaay9 tribe, lived here thousands of years ago on the land that would become Rancho Santa Fe. There were three governments– The Spanish Colonial period, the Mexican Republic, and then California statehood in 1850. Before 1850 though, a land grant was awarded to Juan Osuna which was about 8,800 acres known as Rancho San Dieguito.The history of that period and how Osuna got and used the land is fascinating. By the early 1900s that same land was purchased by the Santa Fe Railroad Company10.
LLW: Interesting.
EF: The Santa Fe Railroad owned the land and planted something like 3,000,000 eucalyptus trees to build railroad ties. The climate here was perfect. However using eucalyptus trees for railroad wood turned out that it actually was, and I hate to use the word fail, but it was an epic fail. The wood from the eucalyptus trees was not appropriate for railway ties. So the Santa Fe Railroad made the ultimate pivot and became the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company and took these acres and acres of gorgeous land and rolling hills and parceled them off into ‘gentlemen's estates.’
LLW: Fascinating.
EF: On ⅓ of each estate were designated citrus groves, with the idea that whoever lived there could grow citrus and ship it as freight on the Santa Fe Railway line.
LLW: They were still going to get some rail business out of this venture!
EF: Exactly. This all took place in the early 1920s, and when they made this pivot and began selling these properties they decided to create a town center, for which they hired the architectural firm, Requa and Jackson11. Requa and Jackson agreed and gave the project to their best drafts person who happened to be Lilian J. Rice. Who, at the time, was not yet a licensed architect.
LLW: And this is in 1920 - which was before women could even vote! Based on what we know from history, we can assume almost everybody who's working at this time is a man. Lillian Rice is probably the only woman in an office who's not answering a phone…
EF: Exactly. She came in and designed this house where we’re sitting, La Flecha House, which was the first residential home in Rancho Santa Fe. It is designed in the Adobe style.
She also designed the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, La Morada Guest House at the time, and was responsible for the Civic Center here in the village. She worked with another man named Leone G. Sinnard12, and they worked with [rather than against] the topography of the land. They didn’t want [to build] anything ostentatious.They thought the land and its rolling hills were far more beautiful than anything they could adorn. They believed there is beauty in simplicity.
LLW: Such a beautiful way to design homes and plan a town.
EF: The town had the same look and feel all throughout. It was really something special.
LLW: Many times people think simplicity is easier to master, but there's a lot of thought and design that goes into making simple, simple. You know?
EF: I know exactly what you mean.
LLW: For anyone who has visited Rancho Santa Fe, you'll notice people that live here, mostly, still subscribe to that principle today. We also have a restaurant, Lilian’s13, at the newly updated Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, named in her honor. She grew into a very important 20th century architect…
EF: An impressive woman originally from National City. Unfortunately, we lost her, too young, to ovarian cancer. Who knows what more she could have done, but she has done many homes that are on the National Historic Register14.
LLW: In terms of the early American residents of Rancho Santa Fe, in addition Bing, Dixie, Lillian and her colleagues, who else is in our 20th century cast of characters?
EF: Douglas Fairbanks15 and Mary Pickford16 were also here.
LLW: Ooh they were big time.
EF: Douglas Fairbanks bought all that property that is now Fairbanks Ranch17, and it was called Rancho Zorro, because his big movie was Zorro. They commissioned Lilian Rice to build them a home, and for whatever reason, Fairbanks and Pickford split and the home was never built for them.
LLW: How sad. I feel robbed of a piece of local history. Were these stars and celebrities in Rancho Santa Fe most of the time? Or did they travel a lot?
EF: Bing Crosby spent more time here because of his involvement in the Del Mar Racetrack18 and the golf course and all of that.
We also have Marguerite Henry19 who was a writer of fiction books, mostly about horses, for younger readers. People loved her books. Misty was a very popular novel of hers, and Brier, the toy company, created horses based on the characters.
LLW: I think I owned, like, all of those horse figurines.
EF: Henry was originally from the midwest but lived and worked here from the 1970s until her death in 1997.
LLW: How can locals or those visiting get involved with the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society?
EF: The best thing to do is become a member. You can become an individual member, on our website (rsfhs.org) for $100.
Once you’re a member you will get benefits like attending ‘Stories from the Ranch’, a series in which we invite local people to come in and share stories. We've had local authors, like John W. Thill author of A California Love Story, and an expert who came to speak about the ins and outs of Bing Crosby…
LLW: Bing is always a crowd pleaser.
EF: Upcoming this summer, we will be welcoming Chris Hillman20, who grew up here in the Ranch, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was a founding member of The Byrds. He also helped create the West Coast country rock sound. The best way to stay in the know of these events is to become a member.
LLW: For our Readers planning a visit to San Diego, what historical or cultural spots do you recommend they take in?
EF:I would direct visitors to start with Old Town's State Historic Park21. Start there and learn about the native peoples of these lands. They were here first.
LLW: Yes, that foundational history is really important when visiting a place and trying to understand it.
EF: Also learn about the Spanish and the Mexican periods that contributed to our rich history. Then come up here to La Flecha House, and we'll give you a tour. We also have a QR code that you can scan and do a walking tour in the village. Then I would say grab a bite to eat at Thyme in the Ranch22. Get your lunch to go and bring it to Del Mar’s Powerhouse Park.
LLW: You just wrote someone's perfect day.
EF: It is the perfect day. I get a chicken tarragon salad and papaya from Thyme and go over to Powerhouse Park, find a bench and look at the Pacific. It's magical there.
LLW: What about museums? Do you have a favorite?
EF: My all time favorite museum has got to be the Tower of London23, because of the architecture and the history there. It was a fortress, a prison, a palace, a church. It did it all. Plus the beef eaters or the yeoman that work there give amazing tours.
[Alternatively] I was in Nashville recently, and when you think ‘Nashville’ what comes to mind are places like the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium, all the country stuff that's going on. [While visiting] I went to a fabulous museum called the National Museum of African American Music24. It was really well laid out and celebrated all genres of music created, influenced and inspired by African Americans, ie. Gospel, blues, jazz, hip hop.
LLW: Genres that are the basis of contemporary music! How cool.
EF: It was so amazingly laid out, and you had the opportunity to put on headphones and listen to snippets of sound and stories
LLW: Which probably brought the experience to life. That's a great museum recommendation.
EF: Highly recommend. I love music, but it was just phenomenal.
LLW: Do you have a favorite musical artist? Or genre?
EF: I like all genres. I grew up listening to jazz with my dad, and my mom loved Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. I am an 1980s kid, so I love 80s music. I also like 90s music and some hip hop and country. My son is a drummer, and he got me into Green Day. I appreciate all music, I really do.
LLW: Do you play any instruments?
EF: I play the drums and piano.
LLW: Is that where your son picked up the drums from?
EF: He'll never confirm that to be true..
LLW: Classic. Last question. What are you currently obsessed with?
EF: Gosh. I've got three. First, I'm totally obsessed about my upcoming trip to Capri for my 25th wedding anniversary. My husband and I went there for our honeymoon and our 10th wedding anniversary but haven't been back in 15 years. I'm very curious to see how it's changed.
My husband's trying to get me to pack in a carry on, so I'm obsessed with creating a capsule wardrobe.
LLW: Capsule wardrobes are a very difficult thing to master. Great obsession.
EF: My other obsession is Chris Hillman and his book Time Between25. It’s about his life in Rancho Santa Fe. He will talk more about it in our Speaker Series, but I can’t stop thinking about how you start a band and I keep thinking about my son, who [as I mentioned] is a drummer, and how does that band go from doing little clubs to being The Byrds and having such influence and then having Tom Petty cover your tracks. I’m kind of obsessed with that book.
Third, I'm obsessed with finding a “forever home” for Sharia’s Closet26, a wonderful, local non-profit that I’m involved with. Sharia’s Closet provides free, emergency clothing to people in need.
LLW: Sounds like the organization serves a variety of types of people in varying situations.
EF: Yes, unhoused people, refugees, victims of sex trafficking, domestic violence, or people who just come up on hard times, whoever needs help.
LLW: Not glamor philanthropy.
EF: Sharia’s Closet provides an almost shopping-like experience and the quality of clothing provided is outstanding. It's all about dignity and respect. The people that come to us are our clients, not people looking for handouts. Anyway, I'm obsessed with Shariah's Closet finding their forever home. [At present] they have a small space in El Cajon, which serves over 90 people per day, from infants to kids, to teens, to men and women.
LLW: Impressive.
EF: Shamine Linton and Sharia’s Closet has been operating for about 10 years, and has served over 45,000 people in our San Diego communities.I’m so pleased to be a small part of it.
LLW: Very good list of things that are currently crowding your brain.
For Readers looking to donate clothing to Sharia’s Closet, please see here
Thank you to Emily and her colleagues at the Rancho Santa Fe Historical Society for their time and commitment to preserving local history for today and future generations.
Next time you’re in San Diego, take Emily’s advice and visit Rancho Santa Fe, La Flecha House and Thyme in the Ranch, you won’t, for a moment, regret it.
La Flecha House is a historic property built by the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company and designed by architect Lilian J. Rice in 1923. Learn more about La Flecha House from the Library of Congress’ digital archives here.
(b. 1889 - d. 1938) Lilian Jenette Rice was an American architect who worked in the 20th century in the California Spanish Colonial Revival style. She was eco-conscious (before it was en vogue) and was a San Diegan, originally born in National City, CA.
(b. 1903 - d. 1977) Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby Jr. was an American singer, songwriter, producer and actor who was extremely influential in the 20th century and is known as the first multimedia star. You may recognize him from one of his most iconic roles as Bob Wallace in White Christmas.
(b. 1909 - d. 1952) Born Wilma Winifred Wyatt, Dixie Lee, her adopted stage name, was an American singer, dancer and actress who was famous for her roles in early cinematic productions. Sadly she died of ovarian cancer in her early 40s, she was married to Bing Crosby in 1930 until her death in 1952.
Referring to the events that took place on March 1, 1932, when Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of colonel Charles Lindbergh, famous aviator, and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was abducted from his crib inside the Lindberghs' private home on 300+ acres in East Amwell, New Jersey. Sadly the baby was found dead over two months later and after an FBI investigation, search and trial that shook America, his kidnapper Richard Hauptmann was found, convicted and sentenced to death in April 1936. Learn more about this event from the FBI, here.
La Morada was the first structure built by the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company in 1922, the structure was designed by Lilian J. Rice and was provided the basis for the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe which now stands in its place. Learn more about La Morada from the Library of Congress, here.
The Kumeyaay, also recorded as 'Iipai-Tiipai or known by the historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of North America who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the United States.
Architectural firm founded by Richard Requa (B. 1881 - d. 1941) and Herbert L. Jackson (d. 1948) who were two notable San Diego based architects who are responsible for many of the landmarks we have here today. Richard Requa was the master architect of the California Pacific International Exposition held in San Diego at, what is today, Balboa Park between 1935-36.
Leone G. Sinnard was a land engineer who worked closely with architect Lilian J. Rice in San Diego, California from 1922 - 1927.
(b. 1883 - d. 1939) Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. was an American actor and filmmaker. He was referred to as “The King of Hollywood” for his immense popularity during the era of silent films.
(b. 1892 - d. 1979) Born Gladys Louise Smith but known professionally as Mary Pickford, Pickford was a Canadian actress, producer and filmmaker who was an early pioneer of cinema and child acting. She was recognized by her long curled hair. Learn more about Mary Pickford and her legacy, here.
Fairbanks Ranch is a community located within Rancho Santa Fe, CA that consists of about 5 square miles of land and is home to hundreds of families.
The Del Mar Thoroughbred Club in Del Mar, CA was co-founded by Bing Crosby in 1937. 21st & 18th has close ties with the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, read our interview with their leadership from Meet the Expert: Horse Racing, here.
(b. 1902 - d. 1997) Marguerite Henry was an American author who is known for her 59 children’s books written about real life animals, mostly horses. Henry won the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind, in 1948.
(b. 1944) Chris Hillman is a musician and pioneer of the musical genre country rock. Learn more about Hillman and his music, here.
Old Town Historic State Park is a historical area that celebrates and tells the story of early San Diego and its residents between 1820 - 1870. Learn more and plan your visit here.
Thyme in the Ranch is a Rancho Santa Fe staple, a quaint bakery and cafe for breakfast and lunch when you’re in town. Learn more, here.
So much I didn’t know about The Ranch, though it was home for years. Well done.