Panhe at San Onofre is an
Acjachemen village that is over 8,000 years old and a current sacred, ceremonial, cultural, and burial site for the Acjachemen people. Many Acjachemen people trace their lineage back to Panhe. It is the site of the first baptism in California, and in 1769 saw the first close contact between Spanish explorers, Catholic missionaries, and the Acjachemen people. The United Coalition to Protect Panhe and The City Project advocate for the preservation of the site. In keeping with the Padres’ tradition of naming areas after patron saints, this area was named after the 4th-century Egyptian hermit, St.
Onuphrius. This Mexican era ranch later belonged to the Forster, Flood and O'Neill families, during which time the land around San Onofre Creek was called Forster City, with a population of roughly 175 in 1880. The town declined in size but the property was important enough for the
Santa Fe Railroad to build a train station called San Onofre in 1888. In the early 1900s, the O'Neills leased the area around the San Onofre train station to Norm Haven, where he oversaw the production of beans, melons, lettuce, and other winter crops. A majority of the roughly 150 or so residents of the ranch were either Hispanic or Japanese-American laborers. The Haven' Ranch area included at least one Catholic Church, a school, and travelers along the
Coast Highway (completed in 1929) could stop at Frank Ulrich's cafe and service station. During World War II, most of the Japanese-American laborers left or were evacuated in response to President Roosevelt's Order 9066. Two residents of Haven's Ranch, Fred and Kajiro Oyama, would later be involved in a U.S. Supreme Court Case (
Oyama v. State of California, 1948) that began to strike down California's laws banning people of Japanese descent from owning land. Haven's Ranch was slowly turned over to the marines at
Camp Pendleton over the course of the 1950s. The village that once existed in the San Onofre creek area was demolished to make way for the I-5 freeway in 1960, though the Marines established housing in the hills to the north of the former train stop starting in the 1970s. On November 10, 2016, the Transportation Corridor Agency abandoned plans to build a
six-lane toll highway through San Onofre State Beach, other nearby sensitive environmental areas, and certain Native American cultural sites. The announcement brings to an end more than 10 years of effort to build through these areas. The abandonment of this route for the toll road was part of an agreement ending several lawsuits filed by the California attorney general and a coalition of environmental groups that sought to block the project. ==Park attractions==