IRVINE PARK : Once Called ‘The Picnic Grounds,’ Historic Area Has Had Its Share of Odd and Memorable Events

It is not the typical Orange County park.

A nun was fined for malicious mischief there. Indians marauded through its oak forests (but only during working hours). A zoo evolved because of the intelligence of the wild gray foxes.

Boys went there to train for health. Men went there to train for war. Children went there to ride the train.

Confederate soldiers gathered there for a reunion. On one occasion, literally half the population of Orange County congregated there for a single, patriotic ceremony.

In 1989, Orange County will be 100 years old, but Irvine Park is already much older--if you count the years when early trespassers from Anaheim called it “the Picnic Grounds.”

Irvine Park, lying in Santiago Canyon at the end of Chapman Avenue just east of Orange, has grown in recent years, nearly tripling its area to 477 acres. Its newer sections have the modern look of wide, open lawns, new trees and scattered softball backstops.

But the center of the old park remains, and its ancient oaks, boating lake, war monuments, immense barbecue pits and picnic tables still can evoke the era of pipe fitters’ picnics, brass band concerts and waltzing in the moonlight.

“You’re still getting a third of a million people up there every year,” said Jim Sleeper, an author who specializes in Orange County history. He added:

“Now admittedly, that is down from peaks of a half-million in earlier times. We’re in the backyard barbecue and TV generation now. But it’s still popular, probably because it still looks old and rustic--unlike most city and county parks, which are like camping in a tennis court.”

Sleeper has made it his business to know about Irvine Park. His California Classics publishing company in Trabuco Canyon, which deals exclusively in Orange County history, has just issued “Bears to Briquets--Irvine Park, 1897-1997” to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the park becoming the first regional park in California.

The county Board of Supervisors formally accepted the gift of 160 acres of parkland on Oct. 11, 1897, but the park’s history as a retreat extends decades before that, according to Sleeper.

On record are the earliest initials carved into its oaks: “T.L.C. 1841.” The height of the initials suggests they were carved by someone on horseback, probably a Mexican, since the area was still a Mexican province back then.

(Fifty-seven years later, county supervisors passed an ordinance forbidding such defilement of the oaks, and they meant it. In 1903, fresh initials were traced to St. Catherine’s Catholic Orphanage in Anaheim, whence a tearful Sister Buenaventa was hauled to court and fined $10 for malicious mischief. The fine nowadays is $500.)

The superiority of the area that became a park over the surrounding wilderness was explained in 1876 by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Polish author (“Quo Vadis”) who explored the area and wrote:

This valley, embracing about two square miles, was not so overgrown with dense and tangled vegetation as the others. It was, in fact, a Versailles garden in the wilderness, embellished with marvelous bouquets of trees and shrubs almost as though contrived by the hand of a gardener-artist.

Ownership of this plot of beauty transferred in the usual way for that period in California:

God gave it to the King of Spain (according to the King of Spain), who lost it to the Republic of Mexico, which gave it as part of a huge land grant to a spendthrift Mexican don (Teodosio Yorba), who lost it as loan security to a shrewd Yankee trader (William Wolfskill), who in failing health sold it to a partnership of four sheep ranchers, three of whom were bought out by their silent partner, a Scot named James Irvine.

In 1892, the Irvine Ranch, constituting a fifth of Orange County’s territory, passed into the hands of Irvine’s son, astute but shy James Irvine Jr. or “J.I.,” as he was known.

“Reflecting his Scottish heritage, Irvine’s frugality became legendary. . .,” wrote Sleeper. “Just as astonishing were some of his extravagances. If an oak intruded upon a projected road-widening, Irvine would reroute the road rather than remove the tree. Not surprisingly for a tree-lover, the Picnic Grounds became the pride of his barony, his personal retreat and the private playground of his children.”

In April, 1897, J.I. offered to donate 160 acres in Santiago Canyon for a public park. The county Board of Supervisors took advantage of this unsolicited offer by taking the Picnic Grounds, the area J.I. was so fond of. They named it Orange County Park. Thirty-two years passed before it was renamed Irvine Park.

The few conditions J.I. imposed were iron clad and reflected his frugal, abstemious disposition. He insisted that no admission fee ever be charged and no sales of intoxicating beverages ever be permitted.

These edicts have been obeyed, pretty much. Strictly speaking, the $1.25 you pay nowadays to drive into the park is a parking fee, not an entrance fee. You can walk or cycle into the park for free.

As for intoxicating beverages, well, that’s more difficult. The German immigrants of Anaheim, who had the county’s only brass band and locally brewed beer, had for decades been taking both to the Picnic Grounds for celebrations.

When told by the park warden, then by a constable, that selling beer at the park now was illegal, the Anaheimers decided to give it away, and the party roared on. “Possibly owing to his Scotch ancestry, this was one contingency that James Irvine had never considered,” Sleeper observed.

County supervisors quickly passed an ordinance forbidding alcoholic beverages, period.

Thus began an era of some of the great gatherings of county history.

The annual May Day celebration in 1899 drew a crowd of 6,210, an estimate based on a count of 525 bicycles, 700 two-horse rigs, 500 one-horse rigs and 19 saddle horses. The main attraction was a mock battle between Spanish-American War and Civil War veterans to celebrate the anniversary of Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay.

The same year, the First (and last) Annual Reunion of Hi Bledsoe Camp 1201, United Confederate Veterans of America, brought 200 of them to the park.

A long string of company, community and church picnics occasionally drew crowds of 5,000 to 6,000, but none approached the turnout Sept. 9, 1919, when from a county population of 57,665, an estimated 30,000 went to the park to honor the returning World War I veterans.

The turnout is all the more amazing because of the difficult haul to the park in those days. The road ran much as Chapman Avenue does today--up the steep El Modena Grade over the Metate Hills where passengers either walked or pushed. It was known as such a “grunt” that in 1916 the Dodge Motor Car Co. filmed one of its cars driving up the grade to the park-- with people in it! --to demonstrate the power of its new automobiles.

The park had already become popular scenery for movies. In 1912, the West Coast Unit of Pathe films established a camp near the park entrance so it could produce a series of short, romantic cowboy-and-Indian adventures. Hiring real cowboys and Indians, Pathe cranked out films at a phenomenal rate.

“Requiring only a day to shoot, how many of these ‘quickies’ Pathe canned is anybody’s guess, but they included such cliffhangers as ‘The Cheyenne Brave,’ ‘The Yacqui Girl,’ ‘Lieutenant Scott’s Narrow Escape’ and ‘Red Deer’s Devotion,’ ” Sleeper wrote.

The Pathe camp lasted two years, but the park continued to be used as a movie location. Among the films shot there were “Topper” and “Lassie Come Home,” plus many lesser films and TV shows and commercials.

The park served other specialized needs.

The Santiago Hunt Club staged two fox hunts a year, beginning in 1903, but the native gray foxes, who took full advantage of the rough country, proved too wily for the hunters. They could even climb trees.

One frustrated member imported five red foxes from Missouri and bred them in cages at the park. The offspring he released into the unfamiliar terrain turned out to be even slyer and swifter than the local foxes. But the caged foxes, an unusual sight in Santiago Canyon, turned out to be the precursor of Irvine Park’s zoo.

Over the years, pet deer, a morose bear, an alligator that liked to dig out to the creek, a vile-tempered ostrich, and other animal odds and ends went on display until more recently, when a formal, one-acre zoo specializing in native animals was built.

In 1926, the Orange County Tuberculosis Assn. built a “Preventorium” beside the park as a place where feeble children could go and build themselves up against “the white plague” of TB.

The Depression closed it down, but in 1942 it reopened as barracks for 2,000 National Guardsmen in from the Midwest for combat training. They took over the entire park, cut down small trees for tent pegs, set up a tent city and converted an existing soda fountain into a PX. During that period, a fire broke out in the park’s pride and joy, its huge dance pavilion. The place was destroyed and never rebuilt.

Now housing tracts edge toward the park’s surrounding ridges, and when they arrive, the park will lose some of its rustic flavor, Sleeper said.

“One of its charms is that it’s back country that is really quite close to civilization. It’s only 11 miles from Santa Ana. There’re going to be houses on its doorsteps pretty soon, but at least the park will stay put,” he said.