Old Temecula Walking Tours

10/17/2026

If you are into genealogy like I am, you will want to attend this event.

10/17/2026

MOONSHINERS IN MEADOWBROOK - A tale of prohibition days

by Bill Cox

IT WAS THURSDAY AFTERNOON, JANUARY 21, 1930. A half year's rainfall had tumbled down in the new month leaving the Meadowbrook area between Elsinore and Perris vaporous and cool.

For ten years crafty bootleggers had schemed against dry laws instituted by the Volstead Act of 1920. Meadowbrook moonshiners were particularly successful. From their secret plant the money-hungry spirit makers had kept a steady supply of grain alcohol flowing into the eager hands of Southland "wets."

But federal prohibition agent William Clements of Los Angeles had other ideas. After months of patient investigation the determined officer, working alone, found the one hot lead he was looking for:

Following close in his auto, Clement trailed a truck-load of sugar into the rolling, rocky hinterland community of Meadowbrook. He watched the slowing vehicle turn east off the main road where the clumsy rig went slipping and sliding along the muddy trail. The noisy transport—with its valuable sweetload—then lumbered over low hills, sloshed its way downgrade and came to a skidding stop in a rainsoaked plowed field. A startled jackrabbit leaped from a brushpile and scampered across the open field to certain safety behind the "Old Goat Ranch" house. Some fifty yards away a lone haystack stood high in the otherwise vacant field.

The truck driver alighted from the cab, walked a few steps and seemingly evaporated beneath the yellowing folds of hay.

The prohibition officer had parked his car off-trail and approached the ranch site cautiously. From a rocky hummock he crouched low and looked down on the curious scene. He studied the shadowy outline of the ranch house, glanced at the truck and haystack again, raised his eyes slowly to the wintry sky and let them fall to the uneven horizon. Beyond the rugged boulders a short distance the San Jacinto River sliced through Meadowbrook's southeast portals where it joined the long, narrow inlet to Railroad Canyon Lake.

Clement scanned the perimeter. Looking around to the opposite side he could see the main road dividing the hamlet, Meadowbrook's only dependable connection with outside worlds. An impassable ridge of granite out-croppings loomed high on the other side of the roving highway. Natural barriers, it appeared, virtually eliminated side road entry to Meadowbrook.

The agent puzzled a moment, mused thoughtfully over the bootleggers' near attainment of perfect isolation, then made his decision to withdraw and call for assistance.

THE RAIDING PARTY returned about two o'clock that afternoon and quickly encircled the Old Goat Ranch hideout. Acting on signal, the lawmen swooped down on the suspected secret eye of activity. To their surprise the ranch house proved relatively free of illicit operations. But at the haystack they were astonished to find one of the largest and most efficient grain alcohol distilling plants ever seized in the memory of federal officers.

The raid netted four arrests, a seventy-five thousand-gallon still, equipment valued at $100,000, and a thousand gallons of pure grain alcohol.

A few suspects eluded the trap, but among those arrested were the owner of the property, a carpenter who said he was working on the ranch without knowledge of the distilling operation, Elsinore miner Herman "Kid" Quirin and a Sunnyslope ranch laborer. Three of the men were taken to the Riverside County jail. The landlord was taken to Elsinore for lockup.

Elsinore Police Chief A. G. Barber, Constable Tom Boyle, and Paul Kuenzli, later Elsinore judge, drove out to the site. Kuenzli was asked by the chief to drive the ranch owner's truck back to the ranch house.

"When we got there I could hardly believe my eyes," said Kuenzli. "It was the biggest raw alcohol still I ever saw." Kuenzli, a small wiry man with twinkling eyes, sat on a shaded window ledge in front of the Elsinore Post Office recently and vividly recalled the Meadowbrook incident of prohibition days long forgotten.

"Before the raid," he said, "it was no trouble to pick up a bottle of homebrew in Meadowbrook. Nearly every property owner had a back porch full. Of course they were only small-timers. They usually kept extra bottles for the wandering tippler with a loose quarter in his pocket. The 'big still' was a surprise to everyone."

Kuenzli said wooden steps between bales of hay led down into the cave chamber. A news story at the time reported the three-level cavern to be sixty feet square. In the main room there were fourteen huge vats in two series of seven each. The air was heavy with the smell of sour mash, wet wood and damp earth.

On the second level authorities found a boiler large enough to power a locomotive. The twenty-foot-long tank hogged much of the limited room space. A high capacity cooker full of finished mash occupied the remaining room area.

On the third level belowground the bootleggers had built a cavernous cesspool to catch dross from the cooker above. It also served another purpose in preventing stray odors from rising too far through the haystack to attract curious noses nearby.

Loose hay covered vents above the casks in the main chamber, and two large columns rose into the hay-camouflaged superstructure. The rising vapors from the brewing mash passed through coils in tanks of cooling water. The fifteen-foot-high haystack cleverly concealed the finished product.

THE MOONSHINERS told officers they had planned to expand the plant by adding another series of vats. But, without the additional equipment, agents estimated the flow of grain alcohol at not less than five thousand gallons and as high as ten thousand gallons daily.

The raid signaled the beginning of a sobering liquor crisis in Southern California wh***ey marts and the silencing of an unknown number of Southland speakeasies.

Hard drinkers in short supply had to get stinko on old standbys like sterno, vanilla and lemon extract, hair tonics, shaving lotions and a variety of gooey cough medicines that went down thirsty gullets with a painful snort.

The light drinkers had a better time of it with their less stimulating homebrews and ever popular w**e tonics.

Meanwhile lawmen rounded up a few more suspects and a trial was held in Los Angeles. The jury visited the illegal distilling plant in Meadowbrook on March 30. There they saw a buzzer system connecting the still and ranch house. After returning to the courtroom they heard the testimony of a Mr. P. Kelly, of Kelly's Boilerworks in Los Angeles. Accounts of the trial say that he proved to be an uncooperative witness and was ordered into the custody of a U. S. marshal by an angry Judge Willis.

Seven days later the landlord and another suspect were acquitted because the jury could not decide that the defendants had had anything to do with actual operation of the illicit still.

Peter Connley, son of a Chicago policeman, captured later, was sentenced to six years in San Quentin. Connley had a prior record of eighteen arrests in Chicago and had been indicted for burglary and robbery.

Herman "Kid" Quirin received a twenty-one-month sentence in San Quentin.

Then two gang killings, one in Chicago and the other in Los Angeles, appeared to have some connection with the Meadowbrook caper. Authorities associated the killings with a large liquor ring operating in the Los Angeles area.

ON APRIL 3 OF THE SAME YEAR federal officers auctioned the distilling equipment once valued at $100,000. The entire setup—to be dismantled—went to high bidders for less than a thousand dollars. Workmen then filled in the hole and restored tranquility to the Meadowbrook scene.

Raids continued in other areas of Riverside County, but always on a much smaller scale. Little stills were taken in Riverside, Nuevo and Menifee Valley. The bootleggers' methods of operation and concealment in each case presented a new and interesting technique, though none ever equalled the lush layout taken by prohibition officers in Meadowbrook.

One wonders: If Clement had not been so persistent would the moonshiners have made it on through to the repeal of prohibition in December of 1933? They had been cashing in on the Meadowbrook diggin's for a long time before they were caught.

Two other names that loomed large in uncovering this fantastic operation were those of George A. Sweet, chief investigator for the United States Treasury Department, and Riverside County Sheriff Clem Sweeters. Working cooperatively, the deputies of Sweet and Sweeters, following the trail of a big sugar truck, had cracked one of the sweetest cases in the annals of law enforcement.

SOURCE: The HIGH COUNTRY - Number 2 - Autumn 1967

10/17/2026

Temecula After Dark Ghost Tours () went to Old Town Temecula late one night to visit the owner of the Historic Palomar Inn (). I ran into my old friend from the Mansion of Lost Souls 💀 (). He was hanging out with his buds including a 9 foot clown 🤡 (why does it have to be a clown?😳).

You can find them both at the https://www.facebook.com/MansionofLostSouls 👻 at the Promenade Mall in Temecula now until November 1. When you see them, you can ask them what the heck they were doing in Old Town? I wanted to ask but the clown gave me the creeps!

For more information visit their website at www.mansionoflostsouls.com.

10/13/2026

In recognition of the Gaucho Grill Argentine Steakhouse () Grand Opening in the First National Bank of Temecula building (The Bank), I want to share information that I have collected over the past 25 years. There is so much available to share that it will take several posts in the coming weeks.

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THE TEMECULA BANK ROBBERY - It actually happened thirty-seven years ago!

by Sam Hicks

THURSDAY, AUGUST 14, 1930, brought an interesting collection of newspaper stories to sun-drenched, sleepy Temecula, a usually quiet little ranch town near the Riverside-San Diego county line. Ed Howard, lifelong resident of the Temecula Valley who works at Murrieta Hot Springs, clipped these news reports and kept them for over thirty years before he recently gave them to me.

From the Elsinore paper came this headline and lead paragraph: "TEMECULA BANK ROBBER CAUGHT! If you plan to rob a bank, don't choose Temecula. Inside of twenty minutes after the hold-up at the First National Bank of Temecula, yesterday, the doughty cashier, J. W. Chisholm, had the robber on the road to jail and the loot back in the bank, besides having frustrated the plans of the bandit, Michael 'Jerry' Diaz, to lock the bank employees in the vault. . . ."

From a Riverside newspaper came: "CASHIER OF TEMECULA BANK IS HERO OF DARING HOLD UP IN WHICH BANDIT IS NABBED. J. W. CHISHOLM TOO ALERT FOR MICHAEL DIAZ; CHASE RESULTS IN CAPTURE; MONEY RECOVERED. Matching his wits with a gunman who poked a revolver through a teller's grill and scooped up $1600 of the bank's funds, J. W. Chisholm, cashier of the Temecula First National Bank, yesterday proved a hero as he frustrated the bandit's attempt to lock the employees in a vault and later figured in a spectacular running gun battle that brought the robber into custody two miles from the scene of the holdup. . . ."

From a Los Angeles newspaper came: "TEMECULA BANK ROBBER CAUGHT. CASHIER AND RANCHER CAPTURE YOUNG BANDIT AND RECOVER $1200 HANDED OVER. First bank robbery in Riverside County in several years occurred Wednesday morning when Miguel Diaz, youthful Mexican, held up the Temecula bank and made his escape with $1200 in cash, only to be chased and captured on the highway near Murrieta Hot Springs. . . ."

From the Escondido paper: TEMECULA BANK ROBBED BUT ROBBER IS CAPTURED LATER. Chief of Police Andreasen received word Wednesday at noon that the Bank of Temecula was held up and robbed by two masked men at ten o'clock Wednesday morning and that he should be on the lookout for the robbers, who were traveling in a yellow Ford roadster. . . ."

THE TEMECULA BANK, facetiously referred to by local ranchers as "the pawn shop," opened for business at ten o'clock Wednesday morning, August 13, 1930. Miss Agnes Freeman, teller, recognized Miguel Diaz as he entered the bank about a half hour later. Miss Freeman knew Diaz well, as he had earlier worked under her father, then foreman of the Pauba Ranch (now Rancho California). Diaz carried with him a folded paper shopping bag.

Miss Freeman was about to greet Diaz when he whipped out either "a .38 special revolver" or a "nickel-plated .32-20 revolver"—take your pick—pointed it at the girl and ordered her to put up her hands. Miss Freeman obeyed.

Chisholm, who was in the rear of the room counting a consignment of money just received, stepped to the window and was also ordered to raise his hands. Diaz threatened to shoot them both if they gave him any trouble. He told Chisholm to give him the cash on the counter and then hand over the consignment money. Diaz sacked up the money and, waving his pistol, ordered Miss Freeman and Chisholm into the bank vault.

Chisholm had anticipated that some day his bank might be robbed, so he kept a handy screwdriver in the vault and a 7.65 Luger pistol in his desk. When Diaz slammed the vault door shut Chisholm already had his trusty screwdriver at work. He succeeded in jamming the door sufficiently to keep it from locking. Diaz fiddled nervously with the door for a few seconds trying to actuate the intricate lock system, gave up the idea and ran out of the bank with his sack full of money.

Diaz was driving a Model A Ford coupe with a canvas top, recently stolen from a man by the name of Dallas in Brawley. Diaz jumped into his get-away car—got it started—and left Temecula headed north.

Jack Chisholm, always thinking ahead about matters like due dates and screwdrivers, lost no time in pushing the vault door open and in scooping up his Luger. He dashed outside and fired a couple of parting shots in the general direction of Diaz's departure.

Rancher John McSweeney had just gotten himself comfortable in the barber chair in the shop across the street where the Temecula Post Office is now located. The barber had already applied a sea of foam to Mc-Sweeney's face. Either the barber's steaming towel, or the shots, or a combination of both, caused McSweeney to leap from the chair and dash headlong into the street. Through the lather his eyes focused on Chisholm, gun in hand.

Together they jumped into McSweeney's Buick and roared off in pursuit of the bandit's Ford. Rancher McSweeney and banker Chisholm saw Diaz turn off Highway 395 on Wi******er Road. As McSweeney speeded up and began overhauling the Diaz car, Chisholm crawled out on the running board and again opened fire with his Luger. Once more Chisholm's foresight proved extremely accurate and he put two shots through the back of the Ford, both of which should have hit Diaz but didn't. Then, just for good luck, Chisholm fired again and cursed his lack of foresight because that was his last shell.

But Diaz didn't know that. The sudden perforations appearing as if by magic in his windshield caused him to make a new decision. He pulled off the road in a cloud of dust, stopped and jumped to the ground, hands in the air, and surrendered. Chisholm relieved the robber of his shiny six-shooter and sack of money and ordered him into the McSweeney car. The banker then asked A. A. Barnett, a well driller working nearby, to drive Diaz's battle-scarred car back to Temecula.

Miguel Diaz, a roaming cowboy in his twenties who got his start in the wild country around Leadville, Colorado, and came to Temecula from Nevada, pleaded guilty to first degree robbery and was sentenced to prison for from five years to life. He had no former record, and his only explanation of his act was that he had hoped to use the money to enroll in a Los Angeles flying school.

Louie Roripaugh, head man at the Pauba Ranch where Diaz worked as a muleskinner, says that the young cowboy's dream of becoming an aviator probably never materialized. Diaz was paroled after serving about three years. A few years ago, on a trip to Imperial Valley, Roripaugh learned that for many years after his release Diaz had worked on the Walker ranch down in the Imperial—as a ranch hand, not as an aviator.

Al Knott, Temecula's blacksmith for a half century, recalls that after the capture of Diaz the bank's insurance company presented Chisholm with a nickel-plated .45 automatic pistol. Chisholm, proud of his gift, would bring the gun down to Al's shop on long summer evenings and the two men would test their skill, using targets set up against steel plates in the back of the shop.

THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF TEMECULA, during its long and useful life, survived many other crises through foresight. During the depression of the thirties its doors remained open for business as usual at all times except for the brief period of time when all banks were ordered closed by the federal government.

The bank remained strong and solvent until the early forties when a new manager began loaning large sums of money to an outside prospector who was a close and trusted friend. The friendly prospector returned periodically to the Temecula bank with reports that his endeavors in the field were just about ready to pay off in huge dividends. However, in the meantime, he needed just a few thousand dollars more to expedite cashing in on his bonanza.

But it was too late. The bank manager had apparently overstepped his bounds. The directors closed the bank.

SOURCE: The HIGH COUNTRY - Number Two - Autumn 1967

10/13/2026

👻 TEMECULA AFTER DARK GHOST TOURS 👻

EXPERIENCE OLD TOWN TEMECULA LIKE NO OTHER GHOST TOUR!

Love ghost stories, haunted history, and creepy places? 👀

⭐ Temecula's Original & Only Local Ghost Tour Since 2009! ⭐

TEMECULA AFTER DARK GHOST TOURS 👻 has brought the chilling past back into the present with tales of current hauntings, true crimes of years past, and ghostly tales that still resonate today in what was OLD WEST TEMECULA.

You will experience locations including the HAUNTED HISTORIC JAIL patio where things move on their own, OLD TOWN MAIN STREET the site of numerous tragedies, and the most HAUNTED HOTEL in the area, just to name a few.

💵 Price: Adult - $15; Child - $10
🗓️ Tour Dates: Monday thru Sunday - (check calendar)
⏰ Tour Time: 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
📍 Locations: Old Town Temecula & Vail Headquarters

To Reserve a tour or for more information, visit: www.TemeculaGhostTour.com

👉 More than just a walk and talk ghost tour, its an experience! 👈

10/12/2026

Temecula History Day in Sam Hicks Monument Park in Old Town Temecula. A few minutes after it ended at 1 pm, the windnado came through and almost took everything away.

10/11/2026

TEMECULA IN 1918

By James E. Brown

By the year 1912 Los Angeles, specifically that portion of the city known as Hollywood, was becoming recognized as the motion picture capital of the world. Fine sunshiny weather and the proximity of rural and desert lands for the photographing of westerns, the main output of the industry at that time, were responsible. By 1916 Temecula was not about to make Hollywood move over, but about two motion pictures companies a month, making sequences where cattle and the railroad met, did shoot scenes here.

One morning Pauba Ranch cowboys pushed four hundred steers from the ranch to Temecula's railroad loading corrals. At least six hand-cranked cameras recorded the event. Nearing the cameras, two steers broke from the herd and had to be chased back by one of the riders. Where else could movie makers find such authentic color?

TEMECULA MEN in those days wore whatever clothing suited them. The main criteria were price, durability and comfort. Chaparajos were hot and heavy, and never worn except when riding in heavy brush. Temeculans saw their first wool "chaps" one afternoon on an actor walking up Main Street. They were a sort of purple brown color, wholly unsuited for working in brush. The actor was also wearing spurs, something seldom worn by Temeculans while on foot.

Most of the actors had been raised on cattle ranches and had worked in rodeos prior to appearing before movie cameras. One of them was the first man to ride Cyclone. But, he was the first to admit, it was after the horse was six years old and had slowed down.

AS THE FOURTH OF JULY neared in 1918 newspapers were full of accounts of the Marines at Belleau Wood, and of the Army heavily engaged at Chateau Thierry. Nearly everyone had someone near and dear to them in the armed services, so the day was to be more like a national prayer meeting than the nation's one hundred and forty-second birthday.

Two weeks later the picture had changed. The German army had over-extended itself and was fighting frantically on both flanks to extricate itself from the trap into which it had blundered. To celebrate, someone suggested holding a rodeo—cattlemen versus actors—combined with a barbecue. The proceeds would go to organizations that were making life more livable for men overseas.

Mahlon Vail of the Pauba Ranch, and Jim Freeman, made steers available for barbecuing. Wood from fruit trees was less apt to make the meat bitter than was oak or sycamore wood, so two of the more prosperous ranchers volunteered to go in search of the wood. They had replaced their teams and wagons with automobiles and had replaced the back seats with box beds. That was the forerunner of pick-up trucks. They drove up to Julian, a two-day trip with horses but a mere two-hour drive by car. There they bought a couple of dead apple trees and cut them into four-foot lengths for transportation in their truck beds. Other men dug a six-foot-deep pit into which the firewood was dumped. Two steers were killed and butchered.

Fires were lit in the pit, and in a bricked-up area where large kettles of chili-beans were to be cooked. One kettle was heavily flavored with chili, the other one only moderately flavored. When wood in the pit had burned down to live coals, the meat, heavily painted with hot chili and wrapped in wet burlap or gunny sacking, was lowered into the pit. The live coals were then raked over the meat and the pit refilled with dirt.

The chili-bean pots were partly filled with dried beans—big brown kidneys and little white teparys.* The beans were covered with salty water and kept simmering overnight. Next morning some of the beef would be braised over the cooking fires, cut into small chunks, and added to the beans with the chili.

* Here in THE HIGH COUNTRY editorial office we had never heard of tepary beans, so we sent an inquiry off to James A. Brown. He had this to say in his reply: "In the spring of 1916 our congressman sent to us, and to all other farmers in San Diego County, a quarter pound of tepary seed. We planted them and carefully preserved the seed crop. The tepary bean was very small, and it was white. It stood boiling very well, not cooking down into a mush. Back in 1918 it was the last word in beans. About 1920 it occurred to someone that it took a lot of these beans to fill an eighty-pound bean sack. After that I never heard of them again." . . . The Encyclopedia Americana says only that the tepary bean is a native of southwestern United States and is cultivated in arid regions.—Editor

WHILE PREPARATIONS FOR DINNER were underway, the farmers and actors who aspired to be rodeo champs took their saddles and bridles and gathered on a piece of level land just to the east of the Temecula railroad station. There were no bleachers for the audience, nor chutes for saddling up the bronchos. Temecula farmers supplied some of the horses to be ridden—horses that would give their riders a brief argument when first mounted. The actors had shipped in a carload of had-been and would-be rodeo horses, and a couple of Brahma bulls.

A Temecula horse was saddled first. The rider mounted, swinging his spurred boots while he held his hat aloft in one hand and the reins and lead rope in the other. After a couple of minutes, with the rider still in the saddle, the horse gave up and was led off to a shady area at the side of the arena.

Then a Hollywood horse was saddled by putting a rope around his left back foot that held it off the ground while saddle and bridle were adjusted. With the rider in the saddle, everyone stepped back. The horse got his head down and his back up. He jumped up and down, spun 'round and reared. After a few seconds a pick-up man rode beside the bucking horse, got an arm under the rider's arm, and lifted him off. The unburdened animal headed for the picket line—and some hay—at the far end of the arena.

This pick-up action had never before been seen in Temecula and it called for a parley. After some discussion it was decided that as no prizes were at stake, and it was all for a worthy cause, the farmers would ride their way and the actors would ride theirs.

Two lively young steers were in the cattle loading corral with the actors' two Brahma bulls. After all the would-be caballeros had demonstrated their skills, or lack thereof, one of the Brahmas ("brae-mers" to the cowboys) had a surcingle adjusted about his chest. A rider mounted, holding the surcingle in one hand and waving the other. No respectable male bovine would ever submit to such an indignity! The bull's sides were so fat it was impossible to get a grip with the knees, and none of the four animals were ridden for more than a few seconds.

THE PIT HAD BEEN OPENED and the delicious aroma of barbecued beef filled the air. The morning had dawned bright and sunny, promising a warm, if not hot, day. Well before noon the "temechu" had begun to stream through the mountain gap into the valley, tempering the heat and setting all the windmills to whirling merrily. The temechu is a breeze that daily blows from the ocean into the valley through Temecula Canyon.

At two-by-twelve plank tables, furnished by the local lumber yard, for one dollar (fifty cents for children) guests were served a large slice of well-cooked meat tenderized by chili sauce, a scoop of chili-beans, hot or mild according to taste, and a cup of coffee with as many seconds as desired. Bread and country butter were optional. Families gathered into groups with other families whom they might not have seen for some time. Events of the past were discussed. It was good for people living in the semi-isolation of their farms to meet together now and then.

By the end of six innings of a scoreless baseball game between Temeculans and Hollywood actors the sun was descending in the west. Some of the Temecula players had to begin hitching up their horses for a long drive home. Many of them had been up since two o'clock that morning. There would be chickens to feed before sundown, stables to clean, cows to milk and hogs to slop. It would be midnight before some of them got to bed.

THE NEXT DAY an enterprising farmer drove into the area where the horses had been tied. With a rake, shovel and pitchfork he loaded his wagon with the mixture of straw and manure left behind. He spread it on his field and turned it in with a plow. Dogs cleared up the plate leavings where dishes had been washed.

The finance committee reported receipt of nearly five hundred dollars in gold and silver. As letters from the boys in France were critical of the Red Cross, the entire sum was donated to the Salvation Army.

SOURCE: The HIGH COUNTRY - Spring 1980

CONVOY IN TEMECULA - This is a World War I military convoy traveling north on Front Street from San Diego through Temecula.

SOURCE: Images of America - Temecula - 2006

10/09/2026

10/09/2026

CONFUSED? DON'T BE!

Old Temecula Walking Tours and Temecula After Dark Ghost Tours are one and the same. Old Temecula Walking Tours focuses on the interesting and unique history of Temecula.

Temecula After Dark Ghost Tours 👻 focuses on the more spooky side of Temecula's "Spirited History" as it winds its way down the dark streets and paths of Old Town Temecula and Vail Headquarters.

Each tour is led by a local resident who has resided in Temecula since 1991 (things were much different back in the day). The tour guide is a local historian and researcher who provides a unique look into both sides of Temecula's past that no other tour can provide.

Visit www.OldTownTemeculaTours.com or www.TemeculaGhostTour.com to reserve a tour. Tour Dates are filling up fast for the month of October so don't hesitate to reserve your date now.