| Jim Smith was a beekeeper who settled in the north fork of Trabuco Canyon in the 1870s. It was said that: "Jim Smith was a talker...no ordinary talker... a man given to blasphemous eloquence. When he started cussing... he could peel paint off a stove pipe." When government surveyors first mapped the canyon, they chose to name it "Holy Jim" rather than "Cussin' Jim," since the word "cussing" was considered neither polite nor appropriate for a government publication. Today, all that's visible of his residence are remnants of the stone wall that surrounded the house and numerous fig trees,descendants of his fig orchard. The self-guided trail brochure identifies where Jim Smith's bee hives, house, and fig orchard were and tells something of his ornery life in the canyon. |
