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Weekly E-Updates
Weather
Current Conditions:
Fair, 57 F
Olivenhain: History
Four miles east of Moonlight Beach and Old Encinitas, Olivenhain was established as a German colony in 1884. Many of the pioneers were enticed by newspaper ads promising they could make fortunes from olive groves. When they arrived, however, they found the land too dry to support olive trees, or anything else needing much water. Dark nights echoed with the sounds of mountain lions, coyotes, foxes and wolves, and a pioneer might kill as many as a dozen rattlesnakes in a single afternoon. The hardy immigrants who stayed, and struggled, kept cattle and chickens, and farmed lima beans, which, conveniently, needed little water as their broad leaves hold the morning dew. Pioneer Christiana Wiegand, mother of the first white baby born in this area, often walked her land followed by thirsty, bellowing cattle as she chopped down cactus to get water for them. Today, Olivenhain is a flourishing, upscale community with many new homes, glamorous enough to be on the cover of Architectural Digest. But the pioneers’ weathered meeting hall, completed around December 1884, where once immigrants danced to accordion music and drank home-brewed beer, is a treasured part of the community and is still used for meetings and celebrations.
