The story of Orange County (still astounds me)

THOSE INTERESTED in, but unfamiliar with, local history might want to view the six-part TV documentary, “The Story of Orange County,” produced twenty years ago by KOCE-TV for the Orange County Centennial. It's available on YouTube; see the links below.

Production values for the series are not high (the music seems to say: aren’t we silly?), and the philosophical perspective is far from critical, but there are lots of great old photos and a more-or-less coherent story.

As always, the story astounds me. Only two hundred years ago, the region saw Spanish colonization on the cheap, with mission settlements, not soldiers. Then came the ranchos. Next came the Mexican war of independence, followed by secularization and pushy gringos from the east and their pursuit of Big Money. As Mexico skedaddled, ranching gave way to farming, and, by the 1860s and 70s, OC became a entrepreneur’s freakin' playground.

The Story of Orange County (in 2 episodes)

Episode 1: Birth of a County (in 3 parts)

Part 1: Native Americans, Spanish colonization, and Mexican independence

Factoid: European diseases--chicken pox, etc.--nearly wiped out the natives. The population, once about 125,000, shrunk to about 5,000.

Event: Mexico became independent of Spain by 1821 and secularized the area. Ranchos flourished, missions declined, gringos welcomeD.

Part 2: Drought, vulnerability, and opportunistic European & American Moneymen

John Forster, hailing from Liverpool, bought huge tracts of land, lived in the SJC Mission, died with huge debt. From ranching to farming. Plus: those wacky Germans.

Part 3: trains (1870s) and then more trains;—the boom of the 1880s

Locals got sick and tired of dealing with and sending their taxes to far-away LA. Spent twenty years trying to get their own county. “Orange County,” sans oranges, came into existence in 1889.

Factoid: in the 1860s, they tried to create the “County of Anaheim.” It was a no-go.

Episode 2: “Dawn of a New Era” (in 3 parts)

Part 1: Chapman and his valencias make OC orange after all; electric “Red Cars” pull things together, and commerce thrives

Factoid: nobody marketed oranges in the summer until Charles Chapman showed up (1894). All-out marketing made America orange-happy.

Part 2: the arrival of cars, the Great War, and the “oil boys” in Huntington beach

Factoid: owing to a grassroots “Good Roads” movement, the coastal “State Highway” was completed in 1914. (They didn’t even have to give it a number!)

Part 3: coastal development, the crash, and then WWII

Factoid: in 1925, former Seattle mayor Ole Hanson promoted the crap out of San Clemente, imposing a master plan and tiles and stucco. The crash ended development, and H lost his dang house (Casa Romantica). He went off to found Twenty-Nine Palms.

Factoid: seems like every dogface who was processed at the “Santa Ana Army Air Base” (aka OC fairgrounds) hoped to come back to OC for good. Each one did, I guess. That helped fuel the super-duper post-war boom.