While many people in the area were eating Mexican food on May 5 to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, one local institution had its own tradition to uphold the following day.
The Moulton Museum celebrates May 6 each year as “Arrival Day,” when a young Lewis Moulton first set foot in South Orange County from the East Coast in 1874. He went on to become a pivotal figure in the development of the region from grasslands to today’s lands.
This year, the museum handed out silver key chains with cowboy charms to honor the area’s past. In other years, a larger event was held in commemoration of May 6.
The unassuming museum opened its doors in 2022 in a small strip mall in Laguna Hills. A permanent exhibit is housed in the 2,500-square foot main hall and features a wealth of items from the Moulton family collection.
“Many of these had been stored at the family ranch in Santa Barbara,” said Jacquelyn Sharga, events coordinator and assistant to museum executive director Elisabeth Lange.
An adjacent gallery of 1,000 square feet displays fine art related to the area’s past. The display changes every three months.
The main exhibit, titled “1874: Into the West,” celebrates the arrival of Lewis Moulton to the area from Boston and offers a snapshot of the region in the late 1800s.
The first eye-catcher in the display is an 1880s-era ranch buggy that was used until 1962, when Nellie Gail Moulton and her sister Carrie rode it in the Swallows Day Parade in San Juan Capistrano. An old blanket and a metal foot warmer that held coal indicate how the buggy riders kept warm.
The Moulton family hailed from Boston, where Moulton Hill sat near Bunker Hill. Early family members knew George Washington, who presented them with a flag featuring 13 stripes and a Union Jack symbol. A replica of that flag is prominent in the museum space.
Later family members were friends with Abraham Lincoln, who visited with Lewis Moulton’s parents and met him as a boy.
Moulton spent five weeks traveling by steamship, train and stagecoach to Santa Ana, arriving on May 6, 1874.
After his arrival, he got a job working on the Irvine Ranch. At the store run by John Gail on El Toro Road, he met the owner’s daughter, Nellie, resulting in the union of the two families in 1908.
In 1895, Moulton purchased what became the Moulton Ranch with the help and support of his mother’s family, the Fennos of Boston. Rancho Niguel, detailed on several maps in the museum, was at first Indigenous land, then a Spanish land grant, a Mexican land grant and finally an American-owned ranch. It eventually became the communities of Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Woods and Aliso Viejo.
With partner Jean Pierre Daguerre, Moulton raised sheep and cattle, but when the sheep part of the enterprise did not go well, the two parted ways and Moulton concentrated on cattle ranching.
The ranch extended from the present-day I-5 and El Toro on the north to Dana Point on the south and west to the ocean. Laguna Woods Village, originally called Leisure World, sits in the northwest corner of the ranch, whose headquarters were located where the demolished mall sits.
Other portions of the main exhibit feature ranch equipment, mining equipment and many artifacts from the cattle ranching era.
Two of Moulton’s desks, one a traveling variety, are on display. David Nichols, one of 10 volunteer docents who serve the museum, pointed out how meticulous Moulton was in his record-keeping.
“He had ledger books that recorded expenses as well as rainfall totals, and he stored them all in large binders,” Nichols said as he donned white gloves and leafed through handwritten ledger pages. Books Moulton read, or at least kept on his desk, include early American Western classics such as the novels of James Fenimore Cooper.
One display mentions the fact that author Helen Hunt Jackson came to the ranch to do research for her memorable novel “Ramona,” reenacted each year at the pageant of the same name.
In the adjoining art gallery, the current exhibit, titled “Canyon Colors,” features the botanical paintings and drawings of Silverado Canyon by Clara Mason Fox, a friend of Nellie Gail. Gail was a photographer who maintained friendships with many area artists. The exhibit will end June 26 with a closing reception from 4 to 6 p.m.
The Moulton Museum is at 25256 Cabot Rd. in Laguna Hills. It’s open to the public free of charge every Tuesday and Thursday and the first Saturday of each month from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The family foundation of Lewis and Nellie Gail Moulton has its offices there as well. For more information, visit moultonmuseum.org.
“The museum enriches the culture of this area,” said docent James Proett.
The museum constantly seeks docents, educators, community ambassadors and researchers for archival work. For information, call 949-8-MUSEUM ((949) 868-7386) or email info@moultonmuseum.org.