Olivenhain Fire History
In many ways, Olivenhain has been shaped by fire. See Fire History Map.
According to Richard Bumann, whose ancestors were among the founding settlers of Olivenhain and who has written extensively about the history of Olivenhain, in 1908, a real estate salesman named Muir bought a 160-acre homestead off Dove Hollow Road, where he kept about 20 cows and a single horse named Jack. Sometime between 1910 and 1912, a wildfire started east of the community and was burning westward, driven by Santa Ana winds. Intent on saving his cows and driving them to safety, Muir saddled up Jack and went looking for them. At one point they came to a small canyon, and Muir was determined to cross to the other side. But Jack refused to budge, despite all of Muir’s efforts to urge him forward. Suddenly the whole canyon erupted into flames, and Muir realized that Jack had just saved his life. In honor of his heroic horse, Muir named his property Lone Jack Ranch. He erected a large sign with the name next to the unnamed road bordering it, and people soon started calling the thoroughfare Lone Jack Road. When Muir left in 1915, he took the sign down, but the name stuck, and eventually the county officially adopted the name.
1943 FireThe next major fire, which took place in October 1943, started near Highway 15 and Lake Hodges, where a man was farming and one morning couldn’t get his tractor started. He cranked and cranked, causing the carburetor to overflow. The tractor backfired, and because there was already gasoline on the ground, it sparked a blaze that in some places eventually burned all the way to the coast. When the fire began, Olivenhain resident Art Cole was returning from Solana Beach, where he had delivered a load of hay, driving a flatbed truck. He saw smoke in the east, near Escondido, and to get a better look, he went around the back side of Rancho Santa Fe on Via de la Valle, reaching Del Dios Highway. Suddenly, on the north side of the road, flames appeared atop the mountains, and he spotted two men running at breakneck speed through the chaparral, with the fire at their backs.
Cole knew a dirt road in that area, so he drove onto it, honking his horn. The men saw him and crashed through chaparral, jumping onto the truck. Without a word, Cole spun the vehicle around and drove them all to safety.
Also in jeopardy was the Bumann Ranch. Richard Bumann’s uncle, Hermann, who had been living there, was in the military, so the ranch was unoccupied, and no one was maintaining it; vegetation had grown up around the buildings. Seeing the smoke, Bumann’s father, George, rushed to the property with another of Bumann’s uncles, Emil, as well as several neighbors. They gathered barrels and placed them around the property, filled them with water and put gunny sacks on the edge of each barrel to soak up the water. The fire raced through, hitting the tops of the weeds, and two buildings caught fire. The men who had gathered to save the ranch grabbed the gunny sacks and started whacking the fires with them, beating the flames out. They were unable to save the pig pen (which was empty) and the smokehouse, but as soon as the fire had burned through and the ranch was safe, they rushed off to save the apiaries. To this day, there are charred posts and pieces of twisted metal on the Bumann Ranch, serving as grim reminders of the 1943 fire and the disaster that was barely averted.
Bumann’s aunt and her husband, Alex Reseck, were living in a mining shack near the copper mine, and they managed to save their home from the fire. “My aunt said when the fire went through, there were a lot of lemonade berries,” Bumann said, “and it was as if someone had thrown gasoline on a tree because they were so combustible.” The next day, Reseck went to find his cows, and in Copper Creek Canyon he found all of them burned to death except the bull, who was badly injured, with all his fur seared off. Alex took his rifle and put him out of his misery.
1970 and 1980 Fires
In 1970, a fire began in Village Park, near a wrecking yard where today the swimming pool and lawns reside. According to Bumann, it started in weeds but entered the wrecking yard and caused an oxygen tank to explode. While not technically in Olivenhain, it was just outside and could have threatened the community if it hadn’t been extinguished. Very little information is available about a small wildfire in Olivenhain in 1980, but CAL FIRE maps show a small area near the northwest corner of the community where a fire burned, and longtime Olivenhain resident Anni Mallison captured photos of it.
Harmony Grove Fire
On October 21, 1996, a fire began off the west side of Harmony Grove Road about one mile north of Questhaven Road. The wind-driven blaze raced through Elfin Forest, where the car of a man trying to escape was engulfed in flames and he later died. It continued to speed toward Olivenhain before the wind changed course and sent the fire into La Costa instead. But the inferno produced fire tornadoes, and flames shot 30 to 40 feet in the air. Although La Costa bore the brunt of the fire, three homes were destroyed in Olivenhain, two on Dove Hollow Road and one on Fortuna Ranch Road. One Olivenhain property at the end of Lone Jack was reduced to a moonscape, but the home was saved, thanks to a tenacious homeowner with a fire hose and nerves of steel. The fire lasted three days and caused an estimated $52 million in damage.
Witch Creek Fire
On October 21, 2007, the Witch Creek Fire started in the Witch Creek area near Santa Ysabel during a Santa Ana wind event. The fire burned in a southwesterly direction, crossed over Interstate 15, causing significant damage in Lake Hodges, Del Dios, and Rancho Santa Fe. While not directly impacting Encinitas, the fire burned to the southeast of the Olivenhain community, covering 247,800 acres, destroying 1,852 buildings and forcing the evacuation of approximately 500,000 people, including Olivenhain and the city of San Diego.