Oscar "El Cajon" Soledad

by Velma Talmage

- The Mounted Soledad -

Pictured above, Soledad in the 1938 Miss San Diego parade on his way to the corronation cerimonies.

Soledad got his nickname "El Cajon" from the small box-like jails that he had built for each of his individual political enemies. Defeated in a recall election, Soledad escaped by horesback to San Diego to avoid incarceration in his own "El Cajon."

Soledad would make the bulk of his fortune through a chain of Oscar's Drive-in restaurants. A paper-box factory he bought and tried to convert to a wooden-box factory failed when he could not harvest enough wood from his east county buxus harlandii plantation.