This cul-de-sac, laid out in 1959 as Orcutt Place, was soon rechristened in memory of Father Charles Espelette (1883-1958), Montebello’s beloved Basque priest. A Benedictine monk from the French Pyrenees, Espelette left France around 1904 when his congregation was suppressed by a new law; he then settled in Oklahoma, where he was ordained in 1910. He went back to France in the summer of 1914 to visit his mother but his timing was bad: the First World War broke out while he was there and he was conscripted. After his service, he returned to Oklahoma and then came to Montebello in 1933 at the request of local Basque families who wanted a Basque-speaking priest. He ministered at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel mission, located inside a brickyard in the city’s old Simons neighborhood – Church Road, a dead-end street behind a Home Depot, is the only reminder of this long-vanished place – and lived alone there: a one-man monastery.
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