THE STORY BEHIND DE LUZ
The earliest known documentation of the name De Luz locally was on a map dated 1878 of Rancho Santa Margarita (today’s Camp Pendleton) that designated this stream as the Arroyo Corral de la Luz.
Downstream, where the arroyo emptied into the Santa Margarita River, the California Southern railroad built a station in 1882, shortening the name to De Luz. A post office was contained in the station. Following the establishment of the De Luz Post office here, settler homestead records of the 1880s were signed and dated as being in De Luz.
In the early days the place was known as Corral de Jose de Luz. (Don Juan) Forester's vaqueros told me there was a Spaniard or Californian by the name of Jose de Luz who kept stock in there at one time, and had built a corral there. I remember there was a few stubs of post of a corral near the adobe.A.J. Foss 1915