Author Mines County’s Past : Gems of Trivia, Substance Are Found in Book

Crossing the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn, a new hotel created out of the hexagonal silos of East Irvine’s historic granary, Louis Reichman paused to look at an old wooden water tower.

Legend has it that a lynching occurred on a tree that once stood next to the tower, he said.

The tall, gray-thatched Fullerton College history professor continued walking, stopping in front of three weather-beaten buildings resting on blocks behind a chain-link fence.

The buildings--a hotel, the old Irvine general store and a bungalow--had been uprooted from across nearby Sand Canyon Avenue and now await restoration as part of the Old Town Irvine historic complex of restaurants and shops.

The symbolic blending of the old and the new was not lost on Reichman, co-author of a new book on Orange County’s rich and varied history.

“It’s the old Irvine Ranch--the agricultural and sheep and cattle-grazing area under James Irvine (I and II)--in contrast to the new Irvine Co. development under the leadership of Donald Bren,” he said.

“Bren has roughly 60,000 undeveloped acres, of which this is symbolic. And how quickly is he going to develop it and in what manner?”

For Reichman, it’s all part of what he refers to as the “Orange County Experience,” in the book by the same name that the 52-year-old Fullerton resident has written with Gary Cardinale, 37, a part-time Fullerton College history teacher who lives in Yorba Linda.

Published by Pacific Shoreline Press, the book chronicles the changing face of the county--and the changing faces in the county’s colorful cast of characters--from the Indian, mission and rancho eras to the burgeoning, high-tech major metropolitan area of today.

Aided by dozens of vintage photographs, post cards and illustrations, the 212-page volume is a reader’s gold mine of local history, studded with colorful bits of little-known information aimed at enlightening both longtime residents and short-term visitors.

Consider the chapter on Orange County cities. Do you know, for example:

- What city was once nicknamed the “Sleepy Village of Trees”? (Tustin).

- What city is the home of the first American killed in action against the Germans during World War I? (Yorba Linda, where two churches once bought, but never used, the only liquor license in town to support a community ban on alcoholic beverages.)

- What city has been known as the “Coney Island of the West” (Seal Beach, which boasted a roller coaster, giant roller rink and gambling in the ‘20s).

- What city was named Waterville from the turn of the century to the 1940s and was known briefly in the ‘50s as Dairy City? (Cypress).

The book, however, is more than just a history of a county that can claim both Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Anaheim and President Richard M. Nixon’s birthplace (Yorba Linda).

Reichman, who is in his 20th year of teaching American government, U.S. and California history at Fullerton College, and Cardinale, coordinator of staff development for the Corona-Norco Unified School District, have taken a “cross-disciplinary” approach to their study of Orange County.

The book covers a wide range of historical, political, economic, educational and cultural subjects. It also includes “profile-interviews” of 13 leaders in those areas and delves into both the county’s “problems” (transportation, freeways, housing) and “promises” (such as the completion of the $70.7 million Orange County Performing Arts Center).

A section on contemporary Orange County, which taps an annual poll of the county conducted by UC Irvine, for example, dispels some of the stereotypes about the county as a bastion of arch-conservatives.

“We’re a funny mix,” said Reichman, noting that the county is indeed conservative on such issues as fiscal matters, the death penalty and opposition to gun control legislation.

However, “we are relatively liberal in terms of social issues involving personal choice: the Equal Rights Amendment, for example,” he said. “We’re more for that than the rest of the nation (66% in favor, to 62% nationally), and we’re more pro-abortion on demand (70% in favor, 63% nationally).

“We’ve also got a newly developing mix, which is documented in the book, of slow and no-growth groups, which cross political boundaries.”

In a chapter titled “A Case Study of Orange County’s Most Famous Rancho,” the authors examine the prominent role the Irvine Company--the largest private landholder in California--has played in shaping Orange County’s phenomenal growth.

But, best of all, “The Orange County Experience” is a colorful pastiche of people and places.

Consider two of Orange County’s most famous citizens, Walter and Cordelia Knott, whose one-time Buena Park berry farm has become the third-most-attended amusement park in the country, behind Anaheim’s Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.

Walter Knott, who died at age 91 in 1981, over the years earned the nickname “Mr. Republican” and “Mr. Constitution” for his support of right-wing political, economic and educational causes. Such was Knott’s conservative influence on the county that his former secretary is quoted as saying that “on election day, we would get hundreds of calls, not from the press, (but) just people asking ‘How is Mr. Knott going to vote?’ ”

In a chapter discussing the impact of Disneyland on the county, the authors describe Walt Disney’s purchase of 170 acres from 14 Anaheim landowners in the early ‘50s. Fearing inflated prices should word leak out of his plans to build an amusement park, Disney shrouded his land-buying spree in secrecy. Still, the authors said, he paid far above then-market value: $4,000 per acre.

The book, now available only by mail order, will be sold in bookstores, visitor and convention bureaus, hotels and other tourist locations in early August. Orders may be placed by writing Pacific Shoreline Press, P.O. Box 217, Temple City, CA 91780. The book price is $23.95, plus tax and $2.50 for shipping.

The authors also plan to send samples of the book to all college history teachers for possible use as supplementary material.

It has already received high marks from Jack D. Elenbaas, professor of history and vice chairman of the history department at Cal State Fullerton, who is quoted on the book cover as saying: “If you could read only one book to understand Orange County, this would be the book.”

The idea for “The Orange County Experience” grew out of Reichman’s Orange County tour business of the same name, which he began in 1981 as a money-making alternative to teaching summer school.

The inspiration for the bus tours, in which Reichman presents a historical approach to sightseeing in Orange County, was an Italian tour guide he and his wife, Peg, met in Florence in 1976.

“The fellow was a moonlighting philosophy instructor at a university in Florence,” Reichman said. “He had a knowledge of history, art and current events. He not only knew about the area, but he was fascinated by it from a human perspective--not just a cold, documented perspective--and that’s what appealed to us.”

That same flavor, which Reichman brings to his tours, pervades the book. One of Reichman’s pet phrases is “informed gossip.”

In the book, as on the tour, for example, Reichman’s story about the Irvine Ranch includes mention of Irvine Company president Myford Irvine’s mysterious death in 1959.

Reichman wrote: “Family gossip had it that (Myford Irvine) owed large Las Vegas gambling debts and that he was involved in a deal for land on which Caesars Palace was to be built. By January, 1959, he informed his family and a business associate that he needed $6.5 million and at least $400,000 of it immediately. Both the family and the friend agreed to buy his stock for close to that sum, but Myford Irvine’s body was found at the ranch house with two shotgun blasts in his abdomen and a bullet in his head.”

The coroner’s verdict: suicide.

“No evidence to the contrary was found in an investigation by the California Attorney General’s office, which included exhumation of the body and a second autopsy,” the authors wrote.

Since starting his Orange County tour business, which he expanded to include trips to Los Angeles attractions to keep afloat, Reichman was often asked, “Where can I read about this?” Not surprisingly, since he and Cardinale began writing the book in 1985, the amount of time Reichman has spent on his tour business has decreased in proportion to the amount of time he has devoted to working on the book. Now that it is finished, it’s back to the tour business, he said.

In writing “The Orange County Experience,” Reichman and Cardinale relied on both primary historical sources (original historical documents such as diaries), as well as secondary sources such as newspaper articles and tourist brochures.

“So it’s not a purest book, but we think it’s got good solid documentation blended with current events,” Reichman said. “We’ve included past, present and future deliberately in this book. The phrase that explains it is we set out to try to understand what makes Orange County tick, what makes it different as well as what makes it interesting.”

Indeed, Reichman and Cardinale believe they have something unique to offer in “The Orange County Experience.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it, and that is one of the reasons I was attracted to (the project),” Cardinale said. “There are several local histories and several county histories, but I believe this is a contemporary history and commentary on Orange County.

“I hope that when they (readers) visit a local community or site discussed in the book that they get a real physical and emotional feel for the place they are in--that it’s not just a place on a map--and that they have a feeling of where we’re going and where we’ve been.”