Ah, the good old days! Fallbrook High alumni on Facebook shared their memories of growing up in Fallbrook. One said:
The problem with Fallbrook was that it was too close to exciting downtown Bonsall!
In addition to being known as the Avocado Capital of the World, Fallbrook was known as the Redhair Capital of the World, referring to the red hairs on some strains of marijuana. Fallbrook’s subtropical moisture and heat was ideal for growing marijuana with higher intensity THC.
Getting around the area was very different, decades ago!
- There was no such thing as the 15, there was only the 395 (aka Bloody Gap)
- Temecula had one intersection; with only a stop sign, no lights (Editor’s note: the population of Temecula/Murrieta/Rancho Bernardo in 1970 was only around 2,700 people)
- Fallbrook had one stop sign that sat in the middle of the road in a tire; Alvarado was a through Street; one night the yokums rolled the tire stop sign behind the hardware store to see what would happen
- You could drive directly from Stagecoach onto Pomegranate Lane
- The Santa Fe Railroad train would come through town every night about 8 p.m. — we would put small stuff on the train track just to see how smashed it was later
- You rode the very last train from Oceanside to the Avocado Festival
