It’s a cloudy day at Ranch Mission Viejo LLC’s headquarters on Reata Road, just off Ortega Highway.
Not cloudy enough that anyone expects rain, which would be nice, especially now that there once again are some cattle around the place. Just enough to ensure a cool morning for the construction crews laboring not far off, where the latest residential development is taking shape on another chunk of ranch land.
Tony Moiso greets a visitor, looking more like a cowboy in town for a spell than a long-standing member of the OC 50, our annual list of the most influential members of Orange County’s business community and the centerpiece of this week’s Special Report (see pullout section for entries).
The 75-year-old chief executive of the Rancho Mission Viejo spread is sporting combed-down silver hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and a blue-and-white shirt with Western yoke and open collar. He offers a handshake with a firm grip and a calloused palm that nearly begs to differ with his well-trimmed fingernails—not manicured or polished, but neat enough to hold their own with cuff links or a fancy watch.
Moiso is no stranger to such contrasts.
He’s a fellow who came of age on the Westside of Los Angeles in the glamor and boom of the 1950s and ’60s, but still took his lessons at the annual Cow Camp where his family roped and branded the herds it ran on its spread in South Orange County.
“We’d come down to the ranch, and the trip took all day,” he says.
Stanford, Notre Dame
He’s a proud graduate of Stanford who keeps a football from rival Notre Dame displayed prominently over his desk, even when fellow alum come calling for get-togethers he hosts.
“They just have to understand that some loyalties lie elsewhere,” he says.
His family owned the land that became home to much of the population of South Orange County, yet he did an executive apprenticeship under a hired hand—Donald Bren—for its first residential development, now known as Mission Viejo.
He’s got that libertarian streak that all cowboys seem to have, whether they know it or not, but fell in line to serve as an officer in the U.S. Army.
The contrasts are points of character for Moiso.
His countenance remains unruffled as he seems to mull them over … and settles them in his mind before they rise to the level of contradictions.
The process plays out over the hour or so Moiso spends with the guest in his office, a spacious room covered with dozens of photos and other mementos. The collection has come with the territory in a clan that’s grown from immigrant stock and spent the past 133 years working a vista that once was about 40 times the size of the El Toro Marine base—site of Orange County Great Park and surrounding developments.
Almost half of the original spread—purchased by Moiso ancestor Richard O’Neill with fellow Irish immigrant James Flood in 1882—was carved off by the federal government to create Camp Pendleton amid the emergency conditions of World War II.
OC Communities
Smaller chunks have gone to develop the cities of Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita, as well as the neighboring South OC communities of Las Flores and Ladera Ranch.
The family spread is now about 23,000 acres—the last of the great rancheros in Orange County.
A total of 6,000 acres has gone to the latest residential developments, a new planned community called Rancho Mission Viejo, which consists of a series of villages, the first being Sendero, with Esencia to follow with an opening this fall. The first phases have seen brisk sales and strong prices, and the next wave is on the way, with full culmination of the plan likely 15 to 20 years away.
Another 17,000 acres, meanwhile, have been given over to the Reserve at Rancho Mission Viejo—creating another contrast for Moiso. He knows that the gorgeous green-gold terrain that his family has preserved for perpetuity will continue to complicate the way of life they have valued since before the days when he came down to Cow Camp as a kid.
“Now the development is getting into the ranch—trespassing is a big problem,” Moiso says. “It’s tough to run cows through because everyone is hiking.”
Romance won’t support a ranch, though.
“We have the responsibility to recognize the realities of where we are,” Moiso says. “I’ve been in the cattle business for 50 years and haven’t made much money to speak of—the homebuilding business has been a lot better.”
‘Cattle Ranch Forever’
That doesn’t mean the ranch will go the way of the covered wagon.
The development and gifts of land have been done thoughtfully enough to ensure a place for his family to keep cow country alive in Orange County.
“It’s going to be a cattle ranch forever,” says Moiso, who had to settle the biggest contrast of all before he could stake that claim.
“A rancher only makes money when he sells the ranch,” Moiso says. “The good news is that we found a way to sell it to ourselves.”
