Fast Facts: Welcome Everybody, to SoCal’s Version of the Wild, Wild West

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO— Life in Orange County hasn’t always been about beaches and surfing. Before it was the paradise we know today, Southern California had a wild west past. The wild west, also known as the old west or the American Frontier, refers to the geography, history, folklore, and cultural expression of the Western United States during its frontier period. One notable western OC gangster was Juan Flores, who was arrested in Los Angeles in 1855 for stealing horses and stagecoaches but broke out of San Quentin State Prison a year later. Flores and other gang members rode down to San Juan Capistrano, where they robbed stores and murdered a German shopkeeper named George Pflugardt. After Capistrano residents sent a warning out, Sheriff James Barton and five men departed Los Angeles to try to end the havoc, as Orange County was considered a part of Los Angeles County until 1889. However, while Barton and his group rested at the adobe of Don Jose Andres Sepulveda (present-day West Santa Ana), the local Mexicans warned him that a trap awaited him on the road to Capistrano. Barton ignored their advice, and Flores and his fellow robbers, who called themselves las Manillas, which translates to the Handcuffs,...