Las Flores Adobe is a 6,000-square-foot, C-shaped ranch complex with a carriage house at one end and a two-story building at the other, and it is one of only a few authentic nineteenth-century adobe ranch houses of its kind, combining both Hacienda and Monterey architectural styles. Hacienda-style buildings are one story, with rooms arranged in a row and doors opening onto a covered porch, while Monterey-style buildings are two-story buildings with a porch across the front at the second story. The original construction was mainly adobe with rubble-stone footings, lime plaster exteriors, earthen plaster interiors with a lime whitewash, 36-inch-thick exterior walls and 24-inch-thick interior walls in the two-story portion, wood timbers supporting the second floor and roof, and wood floors. Adobe bricks are made of mud and straw, formed in wooden molds and dried in the sun, and lime is made from shells or limestone and used in mortar, plaster, and whitewash. In 1862, John Forster obtained the deed to Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores from his brother-in-law, Pio Pico; in 1868, Marcus Forster built Las Flores Adobe; in 1869, Las Flores became a stage coach stop; in 1882, Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores was sold to James C. Flood of San Francisco after the deaths of Forster and his wife; in 1888, Las Flores Adobe and 1,500 acres were leased to the Magee family as tenant farmers; in 1947, the U.S. government acquired the land to establish Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton; in 1968, Ruth Magee, the last resident of Las Flores, died; and in 2000, Camp Pendleton and the National Park Service restored the adobe. Abandoned since the 1960s, the ranch house and adjacent farm structures had slowly fallen into disrepair until the restoration project reversed the deterioration, stabilized the structure, and seismically retrofitted it to protect it from earthquakes.
