CELEBRATE! : ORANGE COUNTY’S FIRST...

1880s

THE GASOLINE auto and modern bicycle are invented, but Orange County residents are more enamored of nature than machines. Quail and rabbit hunting in the Laguna hills are popular pastimes, and ostrich farming is big in north Orange County. An ostrich-plume hat is a must for fashionable ladies.

THE BIG CRIME chases are on horseback, often led by the Anti-Horse Thief Society.

THE PLACENTIA Grass Eaters, also known as Societas Fraternia, lead a controversial communal life on a diet of uncooked fruits and vegetables. Spiritualist George Hinde, founder of the commune, is acquitted of charges that he was responsible for the starvation death of a baby in the commune. Still, the Grass Eaters’ rejection of marriage makes the group a juicy gossip item among those convinced the commune is a haven for “free love.”

THE AREA’S population grows from about 5,000 in 1880 to 13,000 in 1889, when the county is officially formed. There are three incorporated cities by the end of the decade--Anaheim, Santa Ana and Orange.

1890s

THE COUNTY’S beaches are a magnet for vacationers, who buy beachfront lots for as little as $1 a foot and build summer cottages or simply put up tents. Suntans aren’t in style, so most ladies wear sunbonnets. Among diversions for guests at Hotel Laguna is tennis--a leisurely game for women, who play in long skirts.

SAN JUAN HOT Springs, 13 miles east of Capistrano on what is now Ortega Highway, is promoted as “the Fountain of Youth.” Farmers of the Santa Ana Valley go to the springs to unwind, while others try to tap the springs’ therapeutic powers to cure a variety of ills.

A GROUP of women forms the Ebell Society in Santa Ana. Their studies of European art and history mark early interest in the county’s cultural development.

MEANWHILE, some of the men take a breather from their farming duties and visit Glass-eyed Mollie’s “Second Street Hotel” in Santa Ana. Mollie (Mrs. Mary Wright) and “Mysterious Bill” (William Wright) are arrested for maintaining a house of ill repute and selling liquor without a license. They are sentenced to up to six months in jail, but the case is overturned in Los Angeles Superior Court because of “the obvious bias of the Santa Ana judge.” The building later becomes the county’s first hospital for “the incapacitated.”

LOCAL NEWSPAPERS are filled with advertisements promoting remedies to cure everything from the tobacco habit to croup and consumption. There are stomach bitters to “tranquilize the nerves, tone the system, enrich the blood,” “cathartic capsules” for those delicate intestinal problems, headache wafers and powders, and sarsaparilla, a “blood purifier” that is supposed to “remove that tired feeling and languor so many people complain of.”

THE ELECTRIC AUTO is invented in 1892, but Orange County doesn’t see its first auto until a circus comes through in 1897. By 1900, there are only three cars in the county.

1900s

POPULATION reaches 19,696 by 1900. About 60% of the residents live on farms.

EVERY GOOD BOY has a pair of knickerbockers, and dad wears a handlebar mustache and a Panama hat. Mom, still shielded from the sun by fancy parasol and hat, now has a fur stole, alligator handbag and silk petticoats. And her fur-lined sports dress for Sunday carriage rides reveals a bit of ankle.

GIOVANNI SCARPA, a Venetian gondolier brought to Southern California to promote the city of Venice, goes into business in Newport Beach offering gondola rides around the bay. He also starts a small, nighttime parade of illuminated boats that is to become the annual Tournament of Lights.

CHINESE workers are smuggled across the Mexican border to provide cheap labor on farms and railroad lines.

NO PARTY is complete without a game of horseshoes. Swimming races are the rage among sports enthusiasts.

1910s

IN THE YEARS before World War I puts many young men in uniform, the fashion is a three-piece sack suit with high vest and wide lapels--and a pocket watch. Ladies become more daring: Skirts rise a few inches above the ankle, and swimsuits start hugging the body, encouraging less “bathing” and more swimming.

SPARKLING mountain water and a mountain resort hotel draw visitors to the former home of Madame Helena Modjeska in Santiago Canyon. The stage actress, who died in 1909 at her cottage in Newport Beach, was part of a Polish Colony in Anaheim before she built her “Forest of Arden” canyon home.

THE MEN OF National Guard Companies E and L are called to service in 1917 as the United States enters World War I. More than 1,600 Orange County men will enlist. Meanwhile, Orange County residents roll bandages, knit socks and mend used clothing to send to Europe. Horses are purchased in Fullerton for shipment to the Allies overseas. The homes of those with relatives in the service post American flags in their windows. And when the men come home in 1919, a victory party is held in Orange County (Irvine) ark.

PROHIBITION begins in 1919, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union holds anti-alcohol talks around the county.

1920s

THE ROARING ‘20s--age of flappers and the Charleston--bring the dance marathon to Orange County. The more liberated women hike their skirts to an inch above the knee, wear their hair short and start using makeup. Corsets are replaced by less binding girdles. The parasol gives way to sunglasses, and suntans become fashionable. Curves are out; the carefree boyish look is in.

A NEWPORT Beach ordinance declares that “the distance between the bottom of a woman’s swim skirt and knee cap must not exceed 10 inches.” In 1923, Tom Robinson, a wealthy Newport pioneer, volunteers to enforce the statute--without pay. Ladies, outraged by the 68-year-old Robinson’s use of hands rather than tape measure, launch a petition drive in 1925, and the law is repealed.

WHISKEY RUNNERS bring “hooch” into the county from Mexico.

THE “JOY ZONE” in Seal Beach offers everything from roller coaster rides to prostitution and gambling. The amusement park, transplanted from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, remains open until 1937.

THE COUNTY’S population is 61,375 in 1920, and new communities start competing for residents in the postwar boom. Thousands come to the opening of Dana Point in 1924 to buy 60-by-100-foot lots for $1,000 each.

EARLY Republicanism hits its peak. Orange County voters give President Warren G. Harding a 78.5% majority in 1920, Calvin Coolidge an 88.5% margin in 1924 and Herbert Hoover a 78.8% majority in 1928.

WASHING MACHINES are promoted in a local newspaper advertisement with an appeal to men to “save her youth.”

WOMEN TEST their wings with flying lessons at Eddie Martin Airport, just north of today’s John Wayne Airport.

FLAGPOLE SITTING, mail-order catalogues and crossword puzzles help pass the time.

RESIDENTS build their own crystal sets and tune in to the outside world via radio.

THE FARM BUREAU Pig Club in Garden Grove raises pigs from Poland and China.

TYPING WHIZ Albert Tangora, whose fingers were insured for $10,000 each, demonstrates his record-breaking skills at Fullerton Union High School in 1923. Tangora had set a world record using an Underwood Standard--8,940 words at a rate of 149 words per minute. In this pre-computer age, competitive typewriter companies often sent out speedy typists to demonstrate the efficiency of their machines.

1930s

AS THE COUNTRY sinks into the Depression, people turn to simple pleasures, including miniature golf, contract bridge, jigsaw puzzles, homemade jalopies, jukeboxes, banana splits and sewing circles.

CURVES MAKE a comeback in fashions for women, but hemlines drop nearly to the ankle. Hats, usually framing long hair, are decorated with feathers, bows or veils and are worn with a tilt to one side. Women discover hair curlers and saddle shoes and don’t feel complete in an evening dress without a corsage. Men wear Stetson hats; boys wear school caps.

AS THE county’s population reaches 118,674 in 1930, the solid Republicanism of the ‘20s gives way to the Democrats. In 1932, the county gives Franklin D. Roosevelt a 1,212-vote majority, although Republicans have a 3-2 edge in registration. In 1936, the Democrats gain a 35,222-to-28,805 lead over the Republicans in voting registration. They will keep that lead until 1944.

THE FIRST annual Newport Harbor rough-water swim is held in 1932.

THE SAME YEAR, Peggy Sacha Hall becomes one of the first women in the nation to get a transport pilot’s license. She also marries her flight instructor, Orange County aviation pioneer Eddie Martin.

THE WCTU in Orange pushes for “dry representatives” in Congress. “A wet legislature can do more harm than a wet President,” writes one local newspaper columnist following the women’s anti-liquor drive.

THE WORKS Progress Administration, formed in 1935, starts a number of projects to provide employment for the jobless of Orange County. Among them is one that funds the painting of murals. The artists include Helen Lundeberg, who will help create post-surrealism in the mid-’30s. (The city of Fullerton is planning to restore the mural she painted in the former City Council chambers.)

GAMBLING becomes rampant in the county, particularly in Newport Beach and Balboa. There are bookmaking parlors and gambling parties where blackjack, keno, craps and poker are played, but slot machines are the biggest attraction. They are found in clubs, bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Tougher state laws and an FBI crackdown on slot machines carried on fishing boats leaving Newport Harbor lead in the ‘40s to the end of gambling.

1940s

WOMEN START wearing trousers, a la Katharine Hepburn. Fashions are comfortable, practical. Hemlines climb back up to the knee, and sweaters become stylish. Women’s swimwear goes two-piece. Baby oil is promoted for a faster, smoother tan.

AT ABOUT 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1942, Orange County air-raid sirens are sounded and residents hear shells bursting from anti-aircraft guns in Los Angeles Harbor. American radar has found an unidentified target about three miles from Los Angeles. Blackout regulations are observed by Orange County residents, who have been apprehensive since Japanese submarines began raiding Pacific Coast shipping just after Pearl Harbor. The target is never identified, and the “Battle of Los Angeles” remains a mystery today.

WARTIME rationing begins in county in 1942. There are certificate programs for tires, automobiles, bicycles and typewriters, coupons for food, gasoline and shoes.

THE BIG BAND era dawns in Orange County when Stan Kenton brings his band to the Rendezvous Ballroom on Ocean Front Avenue near Balboa Pier. A dance step called the Balboa is invented. Kenton will return in 1957 to record “Rendezvous with Kenton” and in 1958 to record “Back to Balboa.” The ballroom burns down in 1966 and is replaced by condos.

EILER LARSEN becomes a fixture on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, where he earns the official title of “Laguna Greeter” by welcoming passers-by nearly every day until he suffers a stroke in 1967.

WORLD WAR II generates a boom of new settlers from across the country, and agriculture can no longer provide enough employment to meet the demands of a population that leaps from 130,760 in 1940 to 703,925 in 1960. Subdividers start developing large residential tracts, and new industries begin opening major plants.

1950s

THE COUNTY SOME refer to as the “Boy Scout and Bible Belt” discovers master-planned communities, flood-control channels, Dick Dale’s “surf rock,” the bikini, and the modern surfboard.

CONSERVATIVE ZEAL finds fertile ground as John Birch Society chapters spring up, reaching a total membership of 5,000 countywide.

NORTHROP CORP. becomes the first aerospace firm in the county when it opens its Electro-Mechanical Division in Anaheim in 1951 with 1,120 employees. The county’s economy is still predominantly agricultural, but the outbreak of the Korean War spurs industrial growth as new operations start up and plants dormant since World War II are again filled with activity.

RICHARD T. (DICK) Hanna’s election to the state Assembly in 1956 marks the first time a Democrat has won a partisan office in Orange County since 1940, and he is only the fourth county Democrat elected to partisan office since 1889. Hanna later will be convicted of conspiracy to commit bribery and defraud the U.S. government in the South Korean influence-buying scandal of the ‘70s.

DORA HILL BECOMES the county’s first woman mayor when she takes office in Newport Beach in 1954.

THE SANTA ANA FREEWAY is extended from Los Angeles County five miles into north Orange County in 1950. The final link to the junction of the future 405 near El Toro is completed in 1958. The freeway wipes out orange groves and triggers new towns and a population boom.

IN 1950, 68% of the county’s 216,000 residents live in urban areas. By 1960, the population will reach 704,000 with 96% in urban areas. Seven cities are incorporated between 1953 and 1957--Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Stanton, Garden Grove, Westminster and Fountain Valley.

THE FIRST ANNUAL U.S. Surfboard Championships are held in Huntington Beach in 1958.

1960s

WOMEN ARE WEARING miniskirts, fishnet stockings, spiked heels, hip huggers and beehive hairdos. Men wear long hair and bell-bottoms. For young people, hitchhiking is the way to get there, and marijuana the way to get high. Dance-floor gyrations include the Jerk, Twist, Pony and Swim. Drive-ins are for necking--and so is “The Lookout” in the hills overlooking Orange.

THE HONEY BUCKET in Costa Mesa is the place to go for jazz, especially when Johnny Finley is on trumpet. Chez Cary in Orange showcases the Richard Carpenter Trio, with Richard on piano, Karen on drums and Wes Jacobs on bass. Karen dares to sing softly in an age dominated by acid rock and catches the ear of Herb Alpert and A&M; records. Richard and Karen will make three gold records as “The Carpenters.” The Righteous Brothers, former Santa Ana High School students, start “blue-eyed soul” in Orange County. Steve Martin--a Garden Grove boy--gets his start at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach.

EDWARD M. (Ted) Kennedy draws a small crowd in Orange Plaza in 1960 while on the presidential campaign trail for his brother.

LAGUNA BEACH becomes “hippie haven.” Some “longhairs” live communally in carpeted caves in Laguna Hills; others sleep on the beach. By 1968, the hippie population in Laguna is estimated at 3,000, and tension between the hippies and police is growing.

TIMOTHY LEARY is arrested on a Laguna Beach street in 1968 after officers find two marijuana cigarette butts in the ashtray of his car. He is convicted of marijuana possession in 1970 and sentenced to state prison for one to 10 years.

THE ANAHEIM UNION High School District’s sex-education program, a nationwide model viewed by some local critics as a Communist conspiracy, is axed by a group of dissidents who have fought the program for two years and finally win a school board majority.

THE ULTRACONSERVATIVE movement reaches its peak in 1964 when John Birch Society member John G. Schmitz wins a state Senate seat.

SOUTH COAST PLAZA, Orange County’s first enclosed regional shopping mall, opens in 1967.

DESPITE PROTESTS from the local community, Black Panther leader and ex-convict Eldridge Cleaver, the presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party, is invited to speak at UC Irvine in 1968. He lashes out against the “white racist pig” society and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

UCI STUDENTS BOYCOTT classes and picket campus buildings in 1969 to protest intervention by police and National Guard units at UC Berkeley.

THE UCI STUDENT Senate passes a controversial resolution calling for U.S troop withdrawal from Vietnam.

THE COUNTY’S population hits one million in 1963.

THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY expands, with North American Rockwell Corp. opening in Anaheim and McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Division in Huntington Beach. Employment in major firms jumps from 21,500 in 1960 to 61,600 in 1970.

THE ORANGE COUNTY Press Club names Richard M. Nixon its 1968 Man of the Year. The award is presented to him at the White House by ultraconservative Republican Congressman James B. Utt.

THE RICHARD M. NIXON Freeway Action Group is formed in 1969. It takes two years to win over the Democrat-led state Senate Transportation Committee, but Assemblyman John Briggs (R-Fullerton) finally wins approval to name a portion of Route 90 the Richard M. Nixon Freeway. The freeway goes through Yorba Linda, Nixon’s hometown, but the name doesn’t catch on. Today, it is still better known as Imperial Highway.

1970s

THE HEALTH CRAZE hits Orange County with holistic medicine, women’s-health clinics, hospital-based alternative birth centers, salad bars, “earth shoes,” hot tubs, alfalfa sprouts, jogging and roller skating.

ALSO HIP IN THE ‘70S: cocaine, self-help books, condos, mopeds, white wine, heavy metal, disco, country music and cowboy bars with bucking machines, midis, leisure suits.

THE STREAKING FAD streaks through high school and college campuses.

SOME 20,000 HIPPIES attend a Christmas Day rock festival in 1970 in Laguna Beach, then a town of 13,000. Three days later, police ship the last spectators out of town on buses. Laguna’s hippie days are, for the most part, over.

DISENCHANTED HIPPIES find a haven in the “Jesus movement.” Calvary Chapel opens four Christian Houses in the county. Fashioned after hippie communes, they provide shelter and Bible study without such worldly distractions as TV, radio and newspapers. Calvary Chapel holds services and concerts in a circus-style tent in Costa Mesa, attracting as many as 10,000 worshipers a week.

IN FALL, 1975, more students sign up for competitive surfing than varsity football at Marina High School in Huntington Beach. The California Interscholastic Federation won’t sanction the sport, but it emerges from the fringe of athletics through efforts of the Orange County Surfing League.

ACTIVISM OF THE ‘60S bypassed Cal State Fullerton, but in 1970, unrest comes to the campus. A visit by Gov. Ronald Reagan is received with heckling that leads to a violent confrontation with police; 19 people are arrested. Students also stage a sit-in to protest U.S. involvement in Cambodia.

BUBBLES, A TWO-TON, pregnant hippopotamus, escapes from the now-defunct Lion Country Safari animal park in Irvine and becomes a symbol of women’s liberation during her 19 days of freedom. Men are inspired by Frasier, an aged African lion who becomes a legend after siring 35 cubs in 18 months. He is buried on a hillside above the former Lion Country Safari site.

ORANGE COUNTY VOTERS give Richard Nixon a 270,000-vote lead over Sen. George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election.

IN 1978, MARIAN BERGESON, R-Newport Beach, becomes the first woman to represent the county in the state Legislature. A year later, Harriett Wieder becomes the county’s first woman supervisor.

RISING PROPERTY VALUES make real estate a prime investment, but demand outpaces the supply of housing. People camp out for days to bid in lotteries for homes in Mission Viejo and Irvine.

HOUSING PRICES RISE in the ‘70s at a rate of 15% compounded annually. The average price of a single-family home jumps from $101,000 in 1978 to $138,000 in 1979. Apartments are converted to more profitable condos. Homeowners associations emerge to govern the increasing number of neighborhoods in which residents pay special fees to maintain shared community facilities such as swimming pools, tennis courts and greenbelts.

CITIES ESTABLISH redevelopment agencies to raise money to revitalize deteriorating downtowns.

CITIES, COUNTY government, special districts, schools and colleges make drastic budget cutbacks in response to the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the initiative that cuts California property taxes by 57%.

1980s

SMOKING IS OUT. Safe sex is in. Flextime, car pooling and on-site corporate child-care programs are emerging--slowly. This is the age of yuppies, couch potatoes, triathlons, brewed decaf, rock videos, Perrier, frozen yogurt, compact discs, VCRs, video games, co-ed health clubs, “low-impact” aerobic dancing, whale-watching, tanning salons, Boogie boards, drug tests in the workplace, microwaves, condom vending machines and cosmetic surgery.

THE MINISKIRT is back. So are fishnet stockings, shoulder pads, worn-leather aviator jackets, turtlenecks, tie-dyes and men’s ponytails. Pre-shredded and acid-washed blue jeans also are hot.

UCI STUDENTS hold an anti-Reagan rally on campus in January 1981 as the President takes office. They call Reagan a “senile tyrant,” while a pro-Reagan group tries to drown them out with the Pledge of Allegiance.

OLYMPIC FEVER hits the county in 1984 as some 200 runners carry the Olympic torch on a route covering 16 cities. The spirit is revived in 1986 by Irvine-based Hands Across America. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people in the county hold hands as part of a coast-to-coast human chain organized to raise money for the disadvantaged.

PICKETS OUTNUMBER participants by nearly 4-to-1 at the Winter Conference on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (WINCON) in Costa Mesa, where aerospace engineers and Defense Department officials gather annually from 1983 to 1987 to compare notes on the latest in weapons technology. The peaceful protest becomes so routine that police officers check with peace activists ahead of time to find out how many arrests are likely to be made on misdemeanor charges, such as blocking a public roadway.

THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD Assn. of Orange County says it will continue to confidentially provide contraceptives to teen-agers, despite a Reagan Administration ruling requiring clinics receiving federal funds to notify parents when children under 18 receive prescription contraceptives.

REP. ROBERT K. DORNAN (R-Garden Grove) calls abortion “the holocaust issue of our lifetime,” and the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Santa Ana is regularly picketed by an increasing number of anti-abortionists.

THE MEDIAN-PRICED Orange County home--at $168,656 in July, 1987--is beyond the reach of more than 70% of county residents. In November, 1987, the median home price of $175,000 makes Orange County the most expensive metropolitan area in the nation in which to buy housing. The high cost of housing sparks a flight to Riverside and San Diego counties, where buyers can get more for less.

THE COUNTY’S POPULATION reaches 1.9 million in 1980, a 36% jump from 1970. With 2.2 million people in 1985, the county is becoming more ethnically diverse. Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group, increasing from 4.5% of the population in 1980 to 7% in 1985. The population also is getting older and wealthier.

GROWTH BECOMES THE issue of the ‘80s as the county faces freeway gridlock. At city and county levels, slow-growth activists try to put brakes on developers through the ballot initiative process.

THE IRVINE CO. announces the end of cattle grazing on its land.