Trabuco Canyon, California

Trabuco Canyon is a small, unincorporated community in Orange County, California, with a population of only a few thousand. Each 4th of July includes an old-fashioned parade of locals riding horses and pulling home-made floats to the cheers of observers who are small in numbers but large in enthusiasm.

It is home to an Orange County landmark, Cook's Corner, a 60-year-old restaurant popular with bikers. Another local landmark is the 30-yr old Trabuco Oaks Steak House that is known, not only for its good food, but for affectionately snipping off the neckties of its patrons. Along with 100's of ties tacked to the rafters, not the least of which is Richard Nixon's, the eclectic atmosphere includes large trees growing up through the ceiling. Diners come from the far reaches of Orange County. A large, private community called Coto de Caza is located in Rancho Santa Margarita but is often referred to its own individual community near Trabuco Canyon.

Trabuco Canyon is named after the nearby canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, land now largely within the Cleveland National Forest. Trabuco is Spanish for blunderbuss, an old type of firearm. The name was applied after soldiers serving under Gaspar de Portola lost such a weapon in the area in 1769. Trabuco Canyon was the site of attempts to mine tin in the early 1900s. Remains of this activity are tunnels into the sides of the canyon, the stone foundation of an ore-processing mill, and some dams along the creek. Unfortunately, the whole tin-mining episode appears to have been a swindle.

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Notable People -Nick Reed